As Russia’s attack on Ukraine intensifies, the country’s government is asking for volunteers from the underground hacker community around the world to help protect critical infrastructure and spy on Russian troops for as much information as possible about future attacks.
Requests for volunteers started popping up on hacker forums just a few weeks ago. “Ukrainian cyber community! It’s time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country,” read one of the posts that soon went viral, even jumping to social networks. The recruitment message included instructions for hackers and cybersecurity experts on how to apply through Google Docs and join this kind of cyber battalion. Volunteers were required to provide professional references and their areas of expertise, notably indicating whether they had experience in development and malware protection
Hackers to stop other hackers
Yegor Aushev, co-founder of a cybersecurity company in kyiv and author of the post calling for hackers to be recruited, told Ukrainian media that a senior official from the Ukrainian government’s Ministry of Defense contacted him on Thursday asking for help. Aushev’s company, Cyber Unit Technologies, already has experience in this type of activity, since a few years ago it worked hand in hand with the Ukrainian government on various projects related to the defense of critical cyber infrastructure, such as databases of banks and public institutions that contain hundreds of millions of personal data of citizens.
The report publicizing Ukraine’s call for hackers from around the world to join its cause came after Russia launched a military attack on one of the country’s most important Ukrainian data centers. Shortly after, the United States Treasury and Homeland Security departments, and some governments in Europe, sounded the alarm about possible cyberattacks on banks, hospitals, government offices and power grids in retaliation for the sanctions that the international community has imposed. against Moscow. In fact, a few days ago, the websites of the Ukrainian cabinet and the ministries of foreign affairs and education suffered several interruptions.
Cyber warfare is nothing new
This is not the first time that a government has asked the international hacker community for help. In December 2021, the United States Department of Homeland Security launched a program that offers money to hackers who can help identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities within their systems. Without going any further, throughout the year 2013, the European Union organized several events under the name of Civic Hacking, and invited technology experts from many parts of the world to demonstrate their code skills to improve the shields of security that governments have deployed to protect their interests on the Internet.
