The hacking group Anonymous renamed the yacht of Russian president Vladimir Putin to «FCKPTN» vandalizing maritime surveillance data.
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A small offshoot of the larger group – which had already pledged to support Ukraine and had attacked the Russian state radio‑television station RT – renamed Putin's luxury vessel and changed its location information to make it appear that it crashed on Snake Island in Ukraine.
Subsequently, the hackers renamed its destination to “anonymous” and “anonleaks”, before finally ending up in “hell”.
The yacht contains an indoor pool, spa, dance floor, gym, bar and deck – all costing 73 million pounds from Mr. Putin's wealth, which is estimated at 70 billion dollars.
Making these changes required the team to hack the "Automatic Identification System" used to track the locations of ships in operation and has been a requirement for all passenger and commercial ships since 2004.
The hackers, represented by a German account on Twitter, «wanted to put the yacht into the sanctions package» as well as «to give a few smiles from the troll’s perspective», according to Bloomberg reporter Ryan Gallagher.
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On the Vesseltracker website , the ship name is still set to “ANONYMO”.
A post made yesterday by the group reported that attacks were carried out against Russian banks and services, the website of the President of the Russian Federation, the Russian Ministry of Defense, and Roskomnadzor.
The hackers said this was “not an operation against the people of Russia. It is not even an attack targeting Russian soldiers. The operation targets Putin and the state apparatus controlled by Putin, state-owned companies, state-controlled media, and individuals and private companies that have benefited from Putin’s authoritarian system for decades.”
The Anonymous group also gave an idea about the limits of its attacks, saying that its activists know that attacks on critical infrastructures such as nuclear plants or traffic control systems are «forbidden».
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Conversely, their intention is to keep Russia's technicians occupied, so that they cannot proceed with attacks on Ukraine or the West.
Source of information: independent.co.uk
