Hackers hijack top Russian football club’s website

Fans of FC Zenit Saint Petersburg, one of Russia’s top football clubs, got a surprise this morning if they visited the team’s website.

Instead of seeing stories and images of their favourite soccer players in action, they were presented with a page of insults directed at the city’s political leaders.

Images of Saint Petersburg governor Valentina Matviyenko and Vadim Tyulpanov, speaker of the city parliament, were shown alongside a message that translated is part as:

“To hell with the party of thieves and pickpockets. They have already destroyed more buildings than the Nazis during the attack on Leningrad between ’41 and ’44”

The rant went on to criticise political leaders for poorly clearing up icicles and winter snow, leading to the tragic death of five people, including two children.

Interestingly, a message on FC Zenit’s Facebook page denied that their website had been hacked, and put the blame on a problem with their DNS records…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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