Volunteer hackers urge targeting Russian GPS

Ukraine's 'IT army,' a volunteer hacker collective, announced it would target the Russian satellite-based navigation system, GLONASS.

Hacker group announced on Telegram it will try to compromise GLONASS, the Russian alternative to the US-led GPS.

Other targets include the Belarusian railway network. The Russian military employs Belarusian territory to transport its troops toward the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other objects inside Ukraine.

"We need to mobilise and intensify our efforts as much as possible," a post on the "IT army," Telegram channel said, Reuters claims.

On Wednesday, hacker group NB65 said they successfully compromised Russia's space agency Roscosmos and its vehicle monitoring system.

The message says the group deleted the agency's WS02 software, an open-source application program interface (API) management tool, rotated credentials, and shut down the server.

Head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, denied the organization's infrastructure was hacked yet reiterated that hacking a satellite would constitute a reason for war.

However, the 'IT army' has been called to action by Ukraine, a country that Russia is already at war with. Inside Russia, however, the population is demanded to call the conflict a 'special operation.'

Proposals to sentence Russian citizens to 15 years of prison for using the term 'war' were floated in the Kremlin.

Russian invasion

On the night of February 24, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. In light of the attack, the hacker community started rallying to help Ukrainians.

With Anonymous being the most prominent one, numerous hacker groups and researchers partake in various campaigns to help Ukraine. Cyber activists targeted Russian state-controlled media outlets TASS, Kommersant, Izvestia, Fontanka, and RBC, pushing them offline.

An unknown group has set up a website tool that allows people to participate in distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Russian websites that it claims are spreading disinformation.

Additionally, cybersecurity firms are urging ordinary civilians to join the cyberwar by means of an app that allows them to attack Russian websites spreading disinformation.

According to the United Nations, over 1 million people have fled Ukraine to neighboring counties. Ukrainian officials claim the Russian invasion has already claimed 2,000 civilian lives.