{"id":45737,"date":"2022-03-16T16:43:28","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packetstormsecurity.com\/news\/view\/33220\/The-300-000-Volunteer-Hackers-Coming-Together-To-Fight-Russia.html"},"modified":"2022-03-16T16:43:28","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T16:43:28","slug":"the-300000-volunteer-hackers-coming-together-to-fight-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/the-300000-volunteer-hackers-coming-together-to-fight-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"The 300,000 Volunteer Hackers Coming Together To Fight Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kali learned how to use technology by playing with his grandfather\u2019s phone. Now, the Swiss teenager is trying to paralyse the digital presence of the Russian government and the Belarussian railway.<\/p>\n

Kali \u2013 and many others who contributed to this article \u2013 declined to share his real name because some of the action he is taking is illegal and because he fears Russian retaliation. He is one of about 300,000 people who have signed up to a group on the chat app Telegram<\/a> called \u201cIT Army of Ukraine\u201d, through which participants are assigned tasks designed to take the fight to Vladimir Putin. In so doing, they are trying to level the playing field between one of the world\u2019s superpowers and Ukraine as it faces bombardment and invasion.<\/p>\n

The sprawling hacker army has been successful in disrupting Russian web services, according to NetBlocks, a company that monitors global internet connectivity. It says the availability of the websites of the Kremlin and the Duma \u2013 Russia\u2019s lower house of parliament \u2013 has been \u201cintermittent\u201d since the invasion started. The sites for state-owned media services, several banks and the energy giant Gazprom<\/a> have also been targeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crowdsourced attacks have been successful in disrupting Russian government and state-backed media websites,\u201d says Alp Toker, the director of NetBlocks. He adds that Russia has attempted to mitigate the attacks and deter hackers by filtering access to certain websites, which has caused further disruption.<\/p>\n

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We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here: https:\/\/t.co\/Ie4ESfxoSn<\/a>. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Like many of his peers, Kali was directed to the Telegram group, which has Ukrainian- and English-language versions, by Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine\u2019s vice prime minister and minister for digital transformation. Fedorov, 31, has been using his vastly expanded Twitter profile to plead with executives at the world\u2019s biggest tech firms to cut ties with Russia. On 26 February, he posted a link<\/a> to the Telegram group, which was set up by his ministerial department. \u201cWe need digital talents,\u201d he said. \u201cThere will be tasks for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

While his home country has long maintained a policy of military neutrality, Kali was spurred to action when he saw Fedorov\u2019s tweet. \u201cI wanted to help and use my attacking skills to help Ukraine<\/a>,\u201d he says via Telegram. \u201cI\u2019m from Switzerland, but I\u2019m a strong hacker and I\u2019m so sorry for every Ukrainian. I do it because I stand with Ukraine and I want to help somehow. I think if we hack Russia\u2019s infrastructure they will stop, maybe, because nothing will work any more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kali says his parents aren\u2019t especially keen on what he is doing, although he tries not to tell them much about it. And he is not the only one.<\/p>\n

Caroline, a twentysomething from the New York metropolitan area, told her parents she had enlisted into the IT army just hours before we speak on the phone. \u201cThey\u2019re starting to get concerned,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Having watched in horror as Twitter and Instagram videos revealed the devastating impact the conflict is having on Ukrainian civilians, Caroline felt compelled to act when she saw Fedorov\u2019s tweet. She had seen how destructive the spread of disinformation had been during Donald Trump\u2019s presidential campaign. \u201cThe 2016 election was an eye-opener to the unfortunate effects of these things, and how it really does affect some of our relationships out in the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Mykhailo<\/picture><\/div>
<\/svg><\/span>Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine\u2019s vice prime minister and minister for digital transformation.<\/span> Photograph: Ukrinform\/Rex\/Shutterstock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There was just one problem: she didn\u2019t know what Telegram was. Unlike Kali, the former preschool teacher isn\u2019t much of a hacker. At first, she was concerned that the app \u2013 which was founded by the exiled Russian billionaires Pavel and Nikolai Durov<\/a> \u2013 was a trap. But, after some research, she downloaded it and joined the group.<\/p>\n

She felt out of her depth when the group\u2019s administrators asked for hackers to bombard Russian state websites with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, by which websites are bombarded with traffic to make them unreachable. This is how many Russian government websites have been disabled since the invasion began.<\/p>\n

But Caroline realised things were getting lost in the torrent of information. Messages in the Ukrainian-language version of the group, for instance, can rack up hundreds of comments in less than an hour. So, she has been helping the English-language group by collating information for a website<\/a> on how to support Ukraine and fight Russian disinformation campaigns. \u201cI enjoy acting as that filter \u2013 as that wind to push the sails in the right direction,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She spends hours every day sharing information in the Telegram chat to help the masses of subscribers. \u201cI can\u2019t explain it,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s just something that\u2019s so innately human that has been inspiring me, the more involved I get. I recognise I\u2019m not special by any means, so all I\u2019m doing is gathering all this information to try to dismantle these campaigns of disinformation that are going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

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E<\/span><\/span>nrique is a Lithuanian IT expert in his mid-30s. He felt that joining the Telegram group was \u201cthe right thing to do\u201d. \u201cGrowing up with your parents telling you stories about how they were exiled to Siberia lives with you your whole life,\u201d he says. \u201cWe are scared that we will be next.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

He had largely overlooked the Russian occupation of the Donbas, an area in eastern Ukraine that Putin\u2019s army invaded in 2014 and claimed as Russian territory<\/a>. But as the news became more urgent on Lithuanian television, he couldn\u2019t ignore the situation any longer. He is less focused on wrecking the Russian internet and more on co-opting ordinary Russians to rise up against their dictator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the world can put pressure on Russian people so much that they would be willing to re-evaluate their upbringing, understand that people are asking them to help, look at what is really happening and perhaps they will rise up that way,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n

Enrique has been inspired by the bravery of the Ukrainian people. That includes those who have taken to the streets to defend their country \u2013 and those who have taken to their keyboards. Ukraine has 290,000 people<\/a> who work in IT and is the world\u2019s outsourcing tech desk. While many of them have given up their day jobs to fight for the army, others have signed up to the IT army.<\/p>\n