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How hacktivists from Russia and Ukraine are unleashing cyberwar
A top Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, said that Russian hackers are trying to spread malware in targeted email attacks on Ukrainian officials and to infect the devices of individual citizens.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been reportedly accompanied by cyberattacks from all sides. The decentralised international group of hacker-activists ‘Anonymous’ has claimed on Twitter several times it has gone after Russian state media channels, posting anti-war messages on their websites. Another group recently disabled electric vehicle charging stations in Russia, reprogramming them to display messages like: “Glory to Ukraine", reports said.
How is Ukraine attacking Russia?
A number of volunteer hackers seem to have answered the Ukrainian government’s call seeking help as the war entered cyberspace. These volunteers use software tools that let smartphone and computer owners anywhere participate in distributed denial-of-service attacks on official Russian websites, block disinformation, let people report Russian troop locations, news agency AP reported. “We are really a swarm. A self-organising swarm,” Roman Zakharov, a 37-year-old IT executive at the centre of Ukraine's digital army, told AP. The movement also draws on IT professionals in the Ukrainian diaspora whose handiwork includes web defacements with antiwar messaging and graphic images of death and destruction in the hopes of mobilising Russians against the invasion.
Global hacktivists take down Kremlin's website
As part of a cyberwar against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the decentralised international activist and hacktivist collective Anonymous claimed to manage to take down the official website of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, ANI reported. However, on Thursday, the Kremlin website appeared to have restored normal operations. On Wednesday evening, Anonymous announced on Twitter that Kremlin.ru, the official website of the President of the Russian Federation, had been taken down. Anonymous also crashed Moscow.ru, FSB, and Ministry of Sports websites, reported Taiwan News.
Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Anonymous has launched a cyber-war that has consisted of hacking into Russian government and state-run media websites, industrial control systems, and hundreds of surveillance cameras across Russia.
How is Russia hitting Ukraine in cyberwar?
Earlier in the month, Ukrainian banks and defence websites had been taken offline in attacks the US government has attributed to the Russian state, a report by Bloomberg said. Hackers linked to Belarus, a Russian ally, have also carried out cyberattacks on the Ukrainian military, according to the cybersecurity firm Mandiant. A top Ukrainian cybersecurity official, Victor Zhora, told AP that Russian hackers are trying to spread malware in targeted email attacks on Ukrainian officials and to infect the devices of individual citizens.
Ukrainian government websites were previously defaced to display messages telling users their personal data is at risk, or targeted with software that made several of the computers unusable.
The Ukrainian government said evidence suggested the involvement of hacking groups tied to Russian intelligence in those attacks, charges that Russia denied.
(With inputs from AP, Bloomberg, other agencies)
