Ukraine's IT Army targets web cameras to curb Russian OSINT efforts

The IT Army of Ukraine, a pro-Kyiv hacker collective, targets web cameras stationed in the country to prevent Russian forces from seeing its troop movements before the long-awaited counteroffensive.

Ukraine’s cyber army has announced a “cam bounty” program to disable web cameras with public access. The program is a play on the term “bug bounty,” which describes a reward system from organizations to security researchers who discover and report vulnerabilities.

However, in Ukraine’s case, people are invited to report the IP addresses of public-facing cameras. Ukraine’s IT Army says that the program’s goal is to assist the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“Web cameras with public access in Ukraine, which transmit information about the operation of air defense systems and the movement of military equipment, are of great help to the enemy,” the cyber warriors said.

Some open-source intelligence (OSINT) accounts on Twitter said that Russians might have used public-facing web cameras to discover the Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) system which Moscow targeted in Kyiv on the night of May 16th.

Owners of web cameras might not even be aware of their use them for nefarious purposes. As Cybernews researchers have demonstrated several times, millions of IP cameras are often easily accessible due to lax security. For example, hackers have even managed to take pictures from inside a Tesla warehouse in California, as well as an Alabama jail.

Meanwhile, concealing troop movements is vital to Ukraine as the country’s military is preparing to launch a much-awaited counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces, entrenched in territories Moscow forcefully took in Southern and Eastern parts of Ukraine.

Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupying the Crimean Peninsula and, later, eastern parts of the country. The Kremlin launched a full-scale war against its neighbor in February 2022, kickstarting the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

Since then, Ukraine has been successfully utilizing its cyber warriors, with Anonymous, Ukraine’s IT Army, Hacker Forces, and others standing behind the country on the digital front. Pro-Russian groups have also sprung up, with some eventually declaring themselves “private military hacker companies.”