“GhostShell is declaring war on Russia's cyberspace, in ‘Project BlackStar’. The project is aimed at the Russian Government,” announced the group on Friday. “GhostShell currently has access to more russian files than the FSB and we are very much eager to prove it,” said the spokesman DeadMellox (who describes himself on Twitter as ‘Blackhat, Leader of #TeamGhostShell’).
GhostShell is prompted by what it sees as contemporary corruption infused with a legacy of communist control. “The still present communism feeling has fused with todays capitalism and bred together a level of corruption and lack of decency of which we've never seen before,” it complains. It points to ‘journalists/reporters conveniently gone missing after criticizing those in power,’ the ‘state of tyranny and regret’ and injustice, and that ‘Large corporations end up making the political game and with it, the future of the country.’
It then points to a Business Insider article, Russian 'Spies' Arrested Over $50 Million Military Electronics Smuggling Network and adds, “If they think that espionage is fun while the people are barely holding on for their lives, then we're going to play a little game as well.”
That little game has so far resulted in the release of 2.5 million records. “Judging by some of the records released,” commented Kaspersky Lab in a related blog post, “the Russian Police, along with Novatek, Russia's largest independent natural gas producer, the Alfa Group, an investment consortium and JINR, the country’s Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, all appear to have been implicated in the alleged leak.
“Some records appear to include individuals’ usernames and passwords while other documents almost read like resumes, complete with individuals’ names, IP addresses, education and job history.”
Until independently verified, the leak remains an ‘alleged’ leak; but eHacking News reports, “Some experts [have] confirmed that the leaked data is valid one. In fact, Team Ghostshell never publish fake data.”