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Ukraine’s Digital Army Disrupts Cyber ​​Attacks

BOSTON – Formed out of anger against Russia’s blitzkrieg, Ukraine’s hundreds of volunteer “hackers” corps were more than a paramilitary hacking force in its first major war. of the Internet age in Europe. It is very important for information warfare and intelligence sources from the crowd.

“We’re really a swarm. A self-organizing swarm,” said Roman Zakharov, 37, IT executive director at Ukraine’s bootstrap digital army hub.

His team’s inventions run from software that allows anyone on the planet with a smartphone or computer to participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on official Russian websites to official Russian websites. bots on the Telegram messaging platform block misinformation, allow people to report Russian military locations, and provide instructions on how to assemble Molotov cocktails and basic first aid.

Zahkarov ran research at an automation startup before joining Ukraine’s digital self-defense force. His team is StandForUkraine. Its ranks include software engineer, marketing director, graphic designer and online advertising buyer, he said.

The movement is global, involving IT professionals in the Ukrainian diaspora, whose works include anti-war websites and graphic images of death and destruction in hopes of mobilizing the Russians against the invasion.

“Both of our countries are afraid of a single man – (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. “He lost his mind.” Volunteers contact Russians directly by phone calls, emails and text messages. They send videos and photos of soldiers who died because of the invasion force from virtual call centers.

Some build websites. “We have set up a website where Russian mothers can look through (photos of) Russian men arrested to find their sons,” Zakharov said by phone from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

It is difficult to gauge the effectiveness of the online volunteer army. Russian government websites have repeatedly been taken offline, if for short periods of time, by DDoS attacks, but in general they are fixable with countermeasures.

It is impossible to say what percentage of the disruption – including more damaging attacks – is caused by freelancers working independently but in solidarity with Ukrainian hackers.

A tool developed by Zakharov’s team called “Liberator” allows anyone in the world with a digital device to become part of a DDoS attack network, or botnet. The tool’s programmers codify new goals as priorities change.

Victor Zhora, a top Ukraine cybersecurity official, said at the war’s first online news conference on Friday that home-grown volunteers were only attacking what they perceived to be military targets. Prioritize government services including the financial, media and railway sectors controlled by the Kremlin. He did not discuss specific goals.

Zakharov did. He said Russia’s banking sector was well fortified against the attack, but some telecommunications networks and railway services were not. He said cyberattacks organized by Ukraine briefly disrupted the sale of railway tickets in western Russia around Rostov and Voronezh, and knocked down phone service for a time in the region. Eastern Ukraine has been controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014. These claims cannot be independently verified.

A group of Belarusian hackers calling themselves the Cyber ​​Republican Party also disrupted rail services in neighboring Belarus this week, seeking to disturb Russian troops transiting this week. A spokesman said on Friday that sales of e-tickets remained down after their malware attack froze railway IT servers.

Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, endorsed a volunteer group calling itself the Ukrainian IT Army, which now has 290,000 followers on Telegram.

Zhora, deputy head of the state’s special liaison agency, said one job of the Ukrainian volunteers was to gather intelligence that could be used to attack Russian military systems.

Some cybersecurity experts have expressed concern that calling for help from freelancers could have dangerous consequences. A shadowy group claims to have hacked Russian satellites; Dmitry Rogozin, Director General of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, called the claim false but was also quoted by Interfax news agency that such a cyberattack would be considered an act of war.

When asked if he approves of the type of hate hacking being done under the umbrella of the hacktivist brand Anonymous – which anyone can claim – Zhora said, “We don’t welcome any any illegal activity in cyberspace.”

“But the world order changed on February 24,” he added, when Russia invaded.

The overall effort has been spurred by the creation of a group called Ukraine Cyber ​​Volunteers led by the civilian cybersecurity executive, Yegor Aushev, in collaboration with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. Aushev says it has more than 1,000 volunteers. Zakharov said his group has 900 members.

Mr. Zhora said on Friday that most of Ukraine’s telecommunications and internet were operating normally despite power outages in areas occupied by the invading Russian forces. He reported on 10 hostile attacks on local government websites in Ukraine to falsely propagate that the Ukrainian government has surrendered.

Zhora said Russian hackers are believed to continue to try to spread destructive malware in targeted email attacks on Ukrainian officials and – in what he sees as a new tactic – to infect each citizen’s device. Three instances of such malware were detected during the preparation for the invasion.

The US Cyber ​​Command has supported Ukraine since before the invasion. Ukraine does not have a dedicated military cyber unit. It stood up when Russia attacked.

Zhora predicts an escalation in Russia’s cyber-aggression – many experts believe that worse is yet to come.

Meanwhile, donations from the global IT community continue to pour in. A few examples: NameCheap donated internet domains while Amazon was providing cloud services, Zakharov said.

He said he has international collaborators he calls the “golden team” – elite hackers and entrepreneurs so highly regarded that they don’t need to work for a single employer.

“Even Google can’t buy these people.”

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