Tech as a warfront in the Ukraine war

Cyberwarfare is making its presence felt, with global tech companies responding to significant pressure to use their influence, with measures such as suspending access to platforms and services.

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, Yurii Filipchuk, CEO and Founder of Party.Space, was in the process of relocating to California from Kyiv. But he decided to return to the Ukraine capital. “I need to be sure that we have all the contingency plans and actions in place,” he says. Party.Space is a metaverse events company. Filipchuk says the nature of the business means they can continue to serve clients.

Technology itself is a constant presence in the war. The sanctions restrict some technologies.  (Shutterstock)

Technology itself is a constant presence in the war. The sanctions restrict some technologies. Cyberwarfare is making its presence felt. Global tech companies are responding to significant pressure to respond, and use their scale of influence, with measures such as suspending access to platforms and services. Mastercard has restricted the use of cards issued by Russian banks, Netflix has refused to distribute state-run TV channels in Russia even though a new law mandates it and Google as well as Apple are cutting off access to Google Pay and Apple Pay respectively, for Russian users. And there is the sense that more is to come.

When Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation tweeted a message to SpaceX on February 25 to switch on its satellite broadband services in the country, he received a response from Elon Musk within hours. “Starlink service is now active in Ukraine”. Quite how it’ll be possible to get a satellite broadband installation done in the midst of a war, remains unclear, but more terminals have reached the country, in the last few hours.

“We appreciate the huge support from global companies that stand with us in challenging times,” Iryna Supruniuk, a spokesperson for TechUkraine, the country’s tech ecosystem platform, said. The conversation ended on a worrying note, “Air raid alarm again in Kyiv”.

Many of the actions by technology firms are voluntary.

“There is no law that imposes companies to do something like that as mandatory. I believe that is the moral law of principles that unifies the people in Europe and people that are against cruelty and totalitarian regime in fighting with us,” says Olga Afanasyeva, Head of ELEKS Kyiv Branch and Visiting Professor – Kyiv School of Economics.

Cyberwarfare, in plain sight

While cyberattacks are usually done silently, a global hacking group Anonymous made a very vocal declaration of cyber war against Russia, and proceeded to compromise Russian websites and infrastructure. Over the last few days, Russian government websites have faced distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) and Russian TV channels have been hacked.

“There is a new decentralized cyber army from the whole world. The headquarters are in Ukraine and supported by decentralized battalions from abroad,” said Yegor Aushev, CEO of Cyber Unit Technologies, a cybersecurity company. Aushev’s firm is working with the Ukrainian government on the defence of important infrastructure.

Earlier this month, Ukraine faced malware attacks, which were detected to have emerged from Russia – the malware is called HermeticWiper. ESET Research Labs, a Slovakia-based cybersecurity company, said there were hundreds of computers in Ukraine that were infected by the malware. It is designed to make PCs inoperable by disabling the option to reboot. “It also appears that at least in one case, the threat actors had access to a victim’s network before unleashing the malware,” says the security report.

Crypto and money, in times of war

Alex Bornyakov, the Deputy Minister of Ministry of Digital Transformation says that the Ukraine Charitable Cryptocurrency Fund has raised $13 million, and counting, in cryptocurrency donations. According to research firm Elliptic, $18.9 million and counting has been received as crypto donations, once the collections by NGOs are also totalled up.

What’s helped is Ukraine’s adoption of crypto coins – the country ranks fourth, according to Chainalysis’ 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Only Vietnam, India and Pakistan sit higher in the adoption index.

There is some concern however that as Russian banks feel the impact of sanctions, Russia could look at alternative routes for transactions. Crypto coins are an option due to their decentralised nature, which makes them harder to intercept or restrict.

Payments company Mastercard blocking multiple Russian financial institutions from its network comes as a response to Kyrylo Shevchenko, governor of the National Bank of Ukraine’s request to Visa and Mastercard to block services on credit and debit cards issued by Russian banks. This will significantly impact the ability to make digital payments.

Mastercard is now on heightened alert, to cyberattacks that may be initiated as a response. “Our Cyber & Intelligence and Corporate Security teams are working with governments and partners around the world to ensure the stability, integrity and resiliency of our systems,” said Michael Miebach, CEO, in a statement.

Startups fear a long-drawn stall

Filipchuk’s Party.Space successfully delivered the Summit of the Organization of the Future metaverse event on February 26, days after the invasion started. “Even though everybody worked from shelters, the team managed to upload the build one day before the event and a support team replaced one another every 30 min.”

Ukraine’s rapidly growing start-up ecosystem is facing its biggest challenge. In 2021, the country’s IT industry grew 36% and for the first time, some start-ups crossed a $10 billion valuation. This included GitLab, a software development company. Globally popular platforms including Grammarly, People.ai and Firefly Aerospace, all crossed $1 billion valuations as well.

Afanasyeva illustrates the difficult path to get here. Before joining security company ELKES, she was CEO of the Ukrainian Venture Capital Association (UVCA). “It was just founded and there was misconduct with Crimea, start of war at Donbas, and it’s been a hard job and endless communication with foreign as well as local investors explaining that there’s the potential in Ukrainian start-up and tech market. We did it successfully,” she reminisces.

Start-ups and tech companies in Ukraine, which have an international footprint, are able to deal with the situation better. “Business and team is not affected workflow wise, but we had to put off the entire fundraising schedule until things stabilize in Ukraine. We are not affected per se, as it's a SaaS product with servers in the US, but it is still hard to put away the emotions,” says Ivanna Vendel, CEO of LabiOffice, a software company.

Similar sentiments are echoed by Aleksandr Konotopskyi, CEO at Ajax Systems, a wireless security solutions company. “Our servers are geographically dispersed throughout Europe in Amazon data centres in Ireland, Great Britain, Germany, France,” he says.

But things aren’t as easy for everyone. Aleksandra Boguslavskaya, CEO and Founder of Data Science UA, a data agency talks about challenges including banking which meant “we don`t have a chance to buy currency, limit the amount for withdrawal, a moratorium on cross-border transfers. We hope that such a financial situation will stabilize soon and we will get our payments from our partners and clients.”

For many Ukrainian companies, Russia is a big market. But things are on pause. “Our company has ceased operation of web services in the Russian Federation and Belarus. We did so on the first day of the invasion,” says Roma Prokofyev, CEO of Jooble, an international job search engine.

Grammarly, a multilingual assistant that uses AI to help users write, was founded in Ukraine. “While we hope for the best, we have also prepared for the worst. That includes having contingency plans for various scenarios, along with financial and logistical assistance to better support our team members and their families in getting to safety,” Brad Hoover, CEO, wrote in an official post.

The semiconductor trump card

Chip-makers Intel and AMD will not ship processors meant for industrial use, to Russia in line with sanctions and new trade restrictions in place. It is not clear if the restrictions cover chip shipments for consumer technology, such as smartphones and computers.

US and European companies including Nvidia, Infineon and STMicro are included. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has confirmed it is halting chip shipments to Russia, as has GlobalFoundries, another chipmaker. Russia could recalibrate supply lines and manufacturing processes to buy semiconductors and chips from Chinese companies such as SMIC, but those are believed to be technically inferior.

The sanctions follow a playbook similar to how Huawei was restricted from accessing US tech products in 2020, including software such as Google’s Android. Huawei registered significant revenue losses, was forced to turn to alternatives, which in some cases weren’t as advanced.

Social media platforms: The complicated web

Social media platforms responded quickly as the invasion escalated. Meta’s Facebook, report a spike in fake user accounts, which were taken down. “Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organisations. We refused,” says Nick Clegg, Meta’s vice-president of global affairs.

Meta has also blocked certain Russian accounts from monetisation on Facebook. Alphabet Inc has curbs in place which restrict Russian media outlets from earning ad revenue on platforms including YouTube. This has since been expanded to include Google’s ad technology, which websites often use to generate revenue.

“There is a growing sense they have a moral obligation to ensure their sites are not exploited at a time of crisis,” says Karen Kornbluh, director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund.

Twitter has temporarily blocked advertisements in Ukraine and Russia, while actively monitoring posts for false information and accounts of what they classified as “vulnerable high-profile accounts”, including those of government officials. “We also paused some Tweet recommendations from people you don’t follow to reduce the spread of abusive content,” the social media network said.

Russia’s response is on expected lines. Internet watchdog NetBlocks confirms Russia is blocking access to Facebook and Twitter.