Hacking Group Sends Text Message To Seven Million Russians

A hacking group has created a platform that automatically sends text messages to people in Russia in an attempt to provide information about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine – with around seven million messages thought to have already been sent out. 

The tool, hosted at the domain 1920.in, is the work of a hacking group called Squad303, who say it allows people to ‘send text messages from your phones directly to randomly selected Russians’. 

“Dear Russians, your media is being censored,” one message reads, with users able to refresh the box for a new option - each already translated into Russian. 

“The Kremlin is lying. Find out the truth about Ukraine on the free internet and in the Telegram app. Time to overthrow dictator Putin!” 

A statement on the tool’s landing page explains how the aim is to let Russians ‘know the truth’ and ‘the power of the free world’. 

It says: “We the people of the world have a message to the Russian nation. 

“A nation that is to pay a huge price because of the shameful decision of the dictator Putin to attack an independent Ukraine by armed forces. The joint action of all the states of the free world, as a response to Russia’s aggression, will lead to the collapse of the entire country. 

“However, nearly 150 million Russians do not know the truth about the causes or course of the war in Ukraine. It is fed with the lies of the Kremlin propaganda. There is no free media in Russia and the internet is censored. 

“It is possible for each of us to convey a direct message to the inhabitants of this enslaved country.” 

According to the Daily Dot, Squad303’s efforts have received widespread attention online thanks to ‘amplification by large Twitter accounts tied to the Anonymous hacking collective’. 

Within 48 hours of releasing the tool, the group reported on Twitter that two million text messages had been sent out to people in Russia. 

And a week after the launch, Squad303 said more than seven million messages had been issued. 

They tweeted: “We are 7 days old! You sent 7,000,000 (Yes! Seven millions!) Text messages to randomly selected Russians via https://1920.in! Even in our dreams we didn't dream of such a result! Thank you people of the free world! We love you!” 

In a statement to the Daily Dot last week, a member of Squad303 described the effort as a ‘non-violent communication project’ designed to bypass Russia’s crackdown on independent news sources, with the domain name a reference to Poland’s unexpected victory against Russian forces in 1920. 

“We know that people wanted to get engaged to help Ukrainians. We wanted to deliver them a tool to start a dialog with Russians,” the group said. 

“We did not expect that Russia would build the digital censorship wall so fast.”