Belarus Organizations are Being Targeted by Cyber Partisan

A clandestine hacking organization successfully attacked both the government of Belarus and their Police, which provided these criminals with access to every Belarusian citizen’s personal information, even the phone calls from Lukashenka supporters and opponents of the regime.

This attack is by far the most notable operation perpetrated by the Cyber Partisans group, which has been active for roughly one year, according to Lukas Andriukaitis, assistant director of the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. 

The Cyber Partisan Group was able to gather an unrevealed amount of Lukashenka staff’s personal information. These involved officials of the Lukashenka internal circle, the Belarusian security services leadership employees, and certain KGB staff, including European Union intelligence agents. The cyber partisans have been able to access the Passport Database which includes personal information on every Belarusian citizen, including passport images, addresses, and job details. 

“The Cyber Partisan group has a goal to seize enough data about the regime and mess with the regime’s cyberinfrastructure enough to initiate a critical moment – a wave of rallies that would overthrow the government,” said Andriukaitis. 

“I think this group is actively working on that and it is a matter of luck, time, and effort to hack enough critical information about the regime that would reveal their crimes against Belarusian society. I think such efforts might lead to further protests in the future”. 

The attackers were able to acquire the logs of the last 10 years of the emergency call history, which also included information about people who claimed that their staff was opponents of the regime. The attackers had complete access to the police database, including the officers’ CCTV video and their work history. They also have access to records of telephonic conversations tapped from supporters and opponents of the regime. 

Officials have attempted to underplay the importance of the cyber partisans’ attacks. They have even called them ‘terrorists’ and ‘school children.’ Furthermore, the Interior Minister said that its systems had been down for one week owing to ‘planned preventive work’. 

“The specialists of the department are currently taking all the necessary measures to restore the smooth functioning of services as soon as possible. The information resources are planned to be fully restored within a week”, Olga Chemodanova said.