The Ukrainian government requested volunteers from underground state hackers to help protect critical infrastructure and conduct cyber spy missions against Russian forces, according to two people involved in the project.
When Russian troops attacked cities throughout Ukraine, volunteer demand began to appear in the hacker forum on Thursday morning, because many residents escaped from the capital Kyiv.
“The Cyber Ukrainian community! It’s time to be involved in the cyber defense of our country,” The Post Read, asked hackers and cyber to submit applications through Google Documents, list their specialties, such as malware development, and professional reference.
Yegor Aushev, one of the founders of the Cybersecurity company in Kyiv, told Reuters he wrote a post at the request of a senior defense ministry official who contacted him on Thursday. Cyber Technology Unit Aushev unit is known for working with the Ukrainian government about critical infrastructure defense.
Others who were directly involved in an effort to confirm that the request came from the Ministry of Defense on Thursday morning.
Representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comments. The defense attachment at the Embassy of the Ukrainian in Washington said he was “unable to confirm or reject information from the telegram channel” referring to the cellular messaging platform, and rejecting further comments.
Aushev said the volunteers would be divided into defensive cyber units and offensive. The defensive unit will be used to maintain infrastructure such as power plants and water systems. In Cyberattack 2015, it is widely associated with Russian state hackers, 225,000 Ukrainians lose electricity.
The Aushev offensive volunteer unit said he arranged would help the Ukrainian military carry out digital espionage operations against storming Russian troops.
“We have troops in our country,” Aushev said. “We need to know what they are doing.”
On Wednesday, the newly found destructive software was found circulating in Ukraine, crashing hundreds of computers, according to researchers at the Cybersecurity ESET company. Suspicion fell on Russia, which has been repeatedly accused of hacking Ukraine and other countries. Victims included government institutions and financial institutions, Reuters were previously reported.
Russia denied the allegations.
Efforts to build cyber military power came late in the game, Aushev admitted.
A security official of Ukraine said earlier this month that the country did not have a dedicated military cyber power, The Washington Post reported. “This is our job to make it this year,” he told Washington Post.
Reaching Thursday night Thursday in Ukraine, Aushev said he had received hundreds of applicants and would begin to do an examination to ensure that none of them were Russian agents.