Last Updated on 01/03/2022 by Nidhi Khandelwal
Ukraine is enlisting the help of a volunteer “IT army” of security researchers and hackers to launch cyberattacks against thirty-one Russian targets, including government agencies, essential infrastructure, and banks.
Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhaylo Fedorov, said on Saturday afternoon that a “IT Army” of volunteer “digital talents” is needed to execute operational tasks against Russia on the cyber battlefield.
A list of Russian targets was provided shortly after via a Telegram channel set up to organize the IT Army’s operations.
There are 31 targets on this list, including Russian government institutions, government IP addresses, government storage devices and mail servers, three banks, significant enterprises supporting key infrastructure, and even Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine and email gateway.
The IT Army was formed shortly after Ukraine’s Defense Ministry began enlisting members of the underground hacker community to help in cyberattacks against Russia.
The recruiting of volunteer hackers and security researchers appears to be having an impact on the sites that are being attacked.
In what looks to be distributed denial of service attacks, the Kremlin, State Duma, and Ministry of Defense websites were taken offline today.
You could be tempted to join the “IT army” and launch cyberattacks against Russian entities while witnessing images of Russia invading Ukraine on TV or social media.
