Cyber army grows as digital partisans flock to Ukraine banner
As casualties mount in the conventional field, hacker groups are signing up in droves to join the conflict’s cyber campaign.
As casualties mount in the conventional field, hacker groups are signing up in droves to join the conflict’s cyber campaign.
Anonymous, BlackHawk, and Belarusian Cyber Partisans are just some of the groups to side with Ukraine, according to a recent Twitter post.
Moreover, even those such as AgainstTheWest that one might expect to be sympathetic to Russia have signed up to oppose it – a further indication that for many, Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine is a step too far.
That said, Russia itself is not without allies, with RedBandits, Sandworm, and CyberGhost declaring for the aggressor nation.
Soldiers great and small
While Facebook owner Meta has already taken action on its platform against Belarusian hacker group Ghostwriter to prevent it from spreading disinformation about the war, other big tech players, including Apple, have been slower to take a stance.
But while some of the giants lag behind, SMEs in the cybersecurity sector appear to be getting stuck in.
ProtonVPN and ProtonMail recently agreed to donate a tenth of revenues from service subscriptions to Ukraine, while Hacken is offering bug bounties to cyber professionals who can find exploits on Russian propaganda sites.
Rookie hackers welcome
Hacken also says it has granted access to its VPN service at no cost to allow less experienced computer users to join the cyberwar against Russia, too.
“Everyone can now use Hacken’s VPN service for free to bypass IP blocking when participating in digital attacks against Russia,” said the company. “Common users and individuals with specialized skills can contribute to destroying the Russian propaganda machine.”
It added that device owners can run an app developed by its sister firm disBalancer to participate in DDoS attacks targeting Russian media and government websites such as the Kremlin, Rosneft, and others.
Hacken claims that in its first day the app brought down more than twenty “Russian propaganda and government websites”, though Cybernews was not able to verify this statement.