How is the “IT Army” recruited by Ukraine used in the war with Russia – 03/02/2022

In the face of the cyber attacks that began Even before Russia invaded UkraineThe neighboring nation is pivotal to waging war on the virtual front. Last Saturday (26th), Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, summoned the “IT Army” to help the country defend itself against Russian advances in the digital sphere.

In a message posted on Twitter, IT experts willing to “fight on the cyber front” were called in. The post redirects it to a channel on Telegram, where volunteers receive assignments to help the digital defense of the country – until the completion of this text, the group already had more than 32 thousand subscribers.

It is worth noting that residents of Ukraine used the messaging app to share information.

Fedorov declared: “We are creating an IT army. We need digital talent.” “There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the electronic front,” said the deputy prime minister, who made requests in his letter. social networks for global technology companies to limit Russian access to global systems.

Some platforms have already taken action. Some meta examples (eg-Facebook), YouTube and Twitter. The three blocked Monetization of Russian state media pages to combat disinformation.

Virtual and informational war

The first task that the Government of Ukraine requires of volunteers is to implement some kind of strategy Attributed to Russian hacking operators Against Ukraine: Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which aim to disrupt a website by directing more traffic to it than it can handle.

In this case, the task was to remove Russian companies, banks and government websites. And it seemed that he was successful: at the beginning of Saturday, the official website of the Russian government, Kremlin.ru, went down, according to information from the Reuters news agency.

For a while, the popular search engine Yandex –google Russian” — was also not available, according to the Ars Technica website.

The pages of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the FSB of the Russian Federation, Sberbank (Russia’s largest bank) “and other important government information systems” fell on Sunday (27), according to the British newspaper The Guardian. National Internet Police Service of Ukraine.

Other goals

But the IT Army’s goals are not limited to government websites or large corporations. “We will also include news sites, YouTube channels and bloggers who are openly lying about the war in Ukraine,” he sends a message in the Telegram group – referring to Russian media, which are prohibited from calling the conflict in Ukraine a war, for example..

On Monday (1), the channel encouraged Ukrainian bloggers and YouTubers to broadcast “24/7 for Russians”.

All media [russos] Great under government control. But thousands of Ukrainians are ready to show the truth.”

Volunteers were also encouraged to remove websites registered in Belarus, one of Russia’s main allies. On the same day the referendum will decide whether the country will introduce more troops into Ukrainian territory, the channel reinforced the need for a “big independent information company” there – also famous for state control of the media – to show what is happening. in Ukraine.

Response to Russian attacks

The rewriting of the narrative Moscow is giving the Russians about the war is one of the reasons Ukraine’s cyberattacks have been driven. But this is not the only reason.

A former Ukrainian official with knowledge of Army Information Technology said the group was formed as a way to fend off Russian cyberattacks.

“We already know that they are [russos] Very good at cyber attacks. The former employee told Wired, “But now we will find out how proficient they are at cyber defense.” Russia already has significant capabilities to carry out attacks. hacker.

A survey conducted by the digital security company NSFocus, which specializes in protection against massive DDoS attacks, showed that threats against Ukraine on the digital front began at least 10 days before the regional invasion, which began on the 24th.

Internet service providers, financial institutions, government utilities, television stations, national bodies and cabinet secretaries are among the targets of electronic actions, according to the company’s report on the conflict. Shared exclusively with Tilt.

It is difficult to assess the final balance of the Ukrainian response to Russian attacks in the virtual environment. Although there are thousands of subscribers to the Telegram channel, it is not possible to know who they are or what their participation in the published tasks is.

There are also challenges about how to distribute targets and prevent infiltration – however, the group appears to be continuing its brave mission to protect the country and attack Russia.