A major pro-Russian hacktivist group has conducted over 6,600 attacks targeting European organizations since March 2022, according to a new report from Orange Cyberdefense. The findings emerge as part of the company's 2025 Security Navigator analysis, which also coincides with the release of a new cybercrime ecosystem mapping tool.
The report highlights how Europe has become the primary battleground for hacktivist operations, while North America faces increasing cyber extortion challenges. The pro-Russian group specifically targets symbolic European entities, including election systems, financial institutions, and critical infrastructure.
"We are seeing a hybridisation of hostile nation-states and criminals," said Charl van der Walt, Security Navigator's head of research. "They move quite fluidly between political activism and crime and legitimate work – but technological mastery is the common thread."
The hacktivists primarily deploy distributed denial-of-service attacks to overwhelm servers and disrupt access to critical services. Their activities often align with geopolitical events, such as the recent farmer's protests in Belgium.
Notably, these pro-Russian groups appear to deliberately avoid targeting U.S. territories, possibly due to recent law enforcement successes against criminal organizations like Lockbit. However, North America remains the most impacted region for cyber extortion, experiencing a 25% year-over-year increase in cases.
The United States also leads in Operational Technology (OT) attacks, with nearly half of all global incidents targeting water systems, grain silos, and similar infrastructure.
Alongside the report, Orange has introduced Cybercrime Now, a new interactive visualization tool. This publicly available resource allows researchers, journalists, and analysts to explore and understand the complex networks behind major cybercrime operations.
The combination of increasing hacktivist threats and evolving cyber extortion tactics underscores the changing landscape of digital security challenges facing organizations worldwide.