The High Society hacker coalition announced 2 new breakthroughs. The first one is that they’ve managed to infiltrate an Italian target, TeaTek, which is an engineering specialist. The second is that Cyber Army of Russia has joined the organization.
UserSec, as well as other pro-Russian gangs, has the goal of pushing Moscow’s political and ideological agenda. As history has shown, many of these gangs are funded and supported by the Russian government itself.
Russia has been known to engage in global cybercriminal activities against their enemies and the allies of their enemies. Some of these activities include espionage, data leaks, informational theft, extortion, direct attacks, and spreading propaganda.
It’s important to note that the newly-formed coalition is still not taken seriously by everyone. That’s because there are precedents to fall back on. Various cybercriminal gangs have announced similar partnerships, just for them to amount to nothing.
That being said, the High Society coalition does appear to be legit. So, what does this mean?
What it means is that pro-Russian gangs are now operating together to achieve higher goals. These seemingly go beyond simple DDoS attacks, NoName style. Instead, the new hacker coalition resorts to more intrusive and damaging operations.
Some of these go so far as to give the hackers access to the victim’s servers. This already shows advanced tactics and tools, which are consistent with most high-profile pro-Russian players.
The High Society organization emerged in a time of unrest on the global stage. The Ruso-Ukrainian war has been proven to be the ideal setup for a boost in cybercrime. Several high-profile gangs have emerged since 2022, all sharing the same political ideals.
NoName is one of them. UserSec is another.
It’s pretty easy to deduce these gangs’ goals based on their profile and self-described politics: they aim to push pro-Russian propaganda and attack those who oppose it. UserSec has partnered with several pro-Russian gangs in the past for this exact purpose.
High Society is understandably more powerful, capable, and far-reaching than any of its members taken separately. This paints the organization as highly capable and dangerous and their most recent Italian job stands proof of that.
The hackers managed to take control of the victim’s servers, which is a considerable upgrade of their standard MO. In most cases, cybercriminal gangs like NoName would rely on DDoS attacks to make a statement. But these types of operations are hardly destructive.
Instead, the goal is to disrupt the target’s activity, which is achieved via flooding the website with bot requests. High Society appears to be focused on inflicting actual damage, although unclear to what degree and what end.
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