TALLINN, Estonia (AP) 鈥 A Belarusian hacker activist group claims to have infiltrated the network of the country鈥檚 main KGB security agency and accessed personnel files of over 8,600 employees of the organization, which still goes under its Soviet name.
The authorities have not commented on the claim, but the website of the Belarusian KGB was opening with an empty page on Friday that said it was 鈥渋n the process of development鈥.
Seeking to back up its claim, the Belarusian Cyber-Partisans group published a list of the website's administrators, its database and server logs on its page in the messaging app Telegram.
Group coordinator Yuliana Shametavets told The Associated Press from New York that the attack on the KGB 鈥渨as a response鈥 to , who publicly accused the group this week of plotting attacks on the country's critical infrastructure, including a nuclear power plant.
鈥淭he KGB is carrying out the largest political repressions in the history of the country and must answer for it,鈥 said Shametavets. 鈥淲e work to save the lives of Belarusians, and not to destroy them, like the repressive Belarusian special services do.鈥
Shametavets said the group was able to access the KGB's network 鈥渟everal years ago鈥 and has been trying to hack its website and database ever since. Once it succeeded, she said Cyber-Partisans was able to download personal files of more than 8,600 KGB employees. 写邪 薪械褌
Based on that data, Cyber-Partisans launched a chat bot on Telegram that would allow Belarusians to identify KGB operatives by uploading their photos.
鈥淲e want to show that in the digital world it is impossible to hide information, and the truth about political repressions will surface, and those who carried them out will be punished,鈥 Shametavets said.
Last week, Cyber-Partisans to pressure the government to release political prisoners. The state-run Grodno Azot plant has made no comment on the claim but its website has been unavailable since April 17.
Grodno Azot, with about 7,500 employees, is a key producer in the country, which relies heavily on chemical industries.
Belarus, a close ally of Russia, was rocked by mass protests after an election in 2020 that gave authoritarian his sixth term in office 鈥 a vote that was denounced by the West and the opposition as fraudulent. Authorities responded by arresting more than 35,000 people and brutally beating thousands of them. Many top opposition figures were arrested and given long prison terms, while others fled abroad.
The country's oldest and most prominent rights group Viasna says nearly 1,400 people are political prisoners in Belarus, including its founder and .
Cyber-Partisans have carried out several large-scale attacks on Belarusian state media in the last four years, and in 2022 , hijacking control over its traffic lights and control system and paralyzing transit of the via Belarus.
鈥淲e're telling the Belarusian authorities that if they don't stop political repressions, it will get worse,鈥 Shametavets said. 鈥淲e will continue the attacks in order to inflict that maximum harm of the Lukashenko regime.鈥
