Ryan Gallagher: Hacktivists wage cyberwar on Putin's supply lines

Saboteurs of old used to blow up railway lines but nowadays, resistance groups opposing Russia and Belarus are disrupting those authoritarian regimes online 

Belarusian opposition activists with a banner reading "The tribunal" at a rally in Minsk, Belarus, in 2020. Picture: Evgeniy Maloletka/AP

Russia’s military began sending large numbers of weapons and troops into Belarus in late January. The official purpose of the movement was a joint military exercise, but Belarus, which has a 1,050km border with Ukraine and a government closely aligned with Moscow, was also a logical staging point for Russian president Vladimir Putin to carry out an invasion.

Several days after the troops arrived weird things started happening to the computer systems that ran the Belarus national railway system, which the Russian military was using as part of its mobilisation.