Russia teaching students to hack infrastructure, Ukraine says

Students in Russia are now taught to launch cyberattacks against Ukrainian and Western infrastructure, according to Ukraine’s intelligence.

Moscow is building a national system of cyberattacks to use against adversaries, including hacking classes for students, said Ilya Vityuk, head of the Cybersecurity Department at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).

“This is now not only about professional special service personnel. We have information that subjects like ‘Cyberattacks on civilian infrastructure’ are already taught in a number of educational institutions,” Vityuk said.

“They want to increase the scale of attacks and the number of people who can do it professionally. By the way, they are taught to attack not only Ukrainian systems but also those of partner countries,” he told United24, a government-run media platform.

According to the SBU, Russia has already hired thousands of hackers, including cybercriminals, to work against Ukraine.

Russia’s cyber army is believed to be funded by its special services that also run a network of research laboratories and institutes to develop tools of cyber warfare.

“Their motivation is not hacking for money, but the destruction of our state. As a result, other countries will seriously suffer from Russian cyber aggression,” Vityuk said.

Since the beginning of a full-scale invasion in February 2022, the SBU has also blocked 76 bot farms and 3 million fake accounts that spread pro-Russian narratives in Ukraine, he said.