Russia warns hacking satellites would be ‘act of WAR’ after Anonymous claimed to have breached space defences

RUSSIA has warned that hacking its satellites is an act of war after the country’s space agency was reportedly hit by a cyberattack.

Yesterday hacker group Anonymous claimed it had shutdown Roscosmos so that officials have “no more control over their spy satellites.”

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Russian space chief Dmitry Rogozin has denied that the agency was breached, but issued a chilling message to anyone who might attempt to do so.

“I want to warn everyone who tries to do it that it is essentially a crime, which should be toughly punished,” he told Russian media.

“Because disabling the satellite group of any country is generally a casus belli, that is, a reason to go to war.

“And we will be looking for those who organised it.

“We will send all necessary materials to the Federal Security Service, the Investigative Committee, and the Prosecutor General’s Office for relevant criminal cases to be opened.”

It comes after Mr Rogozin called Anonymous a group of “scammers and petty swindlers”.

He has previously stated that control of the Russian space industry, orbital group and the Russian International Space Station segment is protected from cyber criminals.

Anonymous has already claimed it successfully breached over 300 Russian websites and offered troops over $53,000 to give up their tanks.

Meanwhile, Russia has pursued other tit-for-tat measures against Western nations in response to sanctions.

Roskosmos said it will no longer co-operate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS.

It has also stopped servicing rocket engines for the US.

And the flags of the US, UK and Japan were scrubbed off a rocket due to launch on Friday, making it look “more beautiful” Mr Rogozin said.

Broadband satellites owned by UK Government-backed OneWeb were due to blast off on the rocket until Russia demanded assurances that they would not be used by Western military and called for the “removal of the British Government from the list of shareholders”.

But the company’s board decided to cut ties, suspending all launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

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In other news, people are increasingly unable to tell apart fake faces made by AI and real ones, new research suggests.

Websites could crash in a couple of months if owners fail to make major change ahead of Chrome, Edge and Firefox ‘version 100’ update.

Uber has revealed the worst and best cities for passenger ratings.

And the naughtiest ever emoji combinations to be careful of have been revealed.

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