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Ukraine is more conscious of hiring a volunteer hacking force. On Telegram channels, participants applaud their collaboration with the government to pursue goals like Russian state bank Sberbank. There have been no clear calls for the same sort of action from Russia, where links between the government and hacking groups have long alarmed Western officials.
“We’re creating an IT army,” Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted on Saturday, referring cybersecurity enthusiasts to a Telegram channel with instructions to take Russian websites offline. “There will be tasks for everyone.” By Friday, the Telegram channel had more than 285,000 subscribers.
Inside the main English Telegram page for the Ukrainian IT Army is a 14-page whitepaper that provides details on how people can join, including where they are and what software to download to mask their identity. New destinations are listed every day, including websites, telecommunications firms, banks and ATM processors.
Yegor Aushev, co-founder of Ukrainian cybersecurity firm Cyber Unit Technologies, said he was flooded with notes after posting a call on social media for programmers to join. His company offered a $100,000 reward to anyone who detects flaws in the code of Russian cyber targets.
Mr. Aushev said more than 1,000 people working in close collaboration with the government participated in his efforts. People were only allowed to participate if someone vouched for them. Organized in small groups, they aimed to hit high-impact targets such as infrastructure and logistics systems important to the Russian army.
“A stand-alone machine has become a distributed international digital army,” said Mr. Aushev. Without going into details, he added, “The biggest attacks against Russia are coming soon.”
A government spokesperson confirmed the study with Mr. Aushev.
It is always difficult to find out who is behind a cyber attack. Groups mistakenly take credit or brag about an effect greater than what actually occurred. But this week there have been a series of attacks on Russian targets. The country’s largest stock exchange, a state-controlled bank, and the Russian Foreign Ministry have been taken offline for a while after being targeted by Ukraine’s volunteer hackers.
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