The secret services of Ukraine (also known as SBU by its acronym in the local language) have reported the arrest of a “hacker” who offered technical assistance to Russian troops. According to what is known, he lent mobile communication services within the Ukrainian territory.
The anonymous suspect reportedly sent text messages to Ukrainian officials, including security officers and officials, proposing that they surrender and side with Russia. The individual has also been accused of routing phone calls from Russia to the mobile phones of Russian troops in Ukraine.
This is how the arrested hacker operated
According to the information that the Ukrainian secret services have offered so far, up to a thousand calls were made in a day through this hacker. Many of them, according to the Ukrainian services, come from the high command of the enemy army. The SBU confiscated the equipment that was used to carry out the operation.
In addition to implicating the hacker for helping Russia make anonymous phone calls to its military forces based in Ukraine, the agency said that the hacker passed commands and instructions to different groups of “Russian invaders”.
In addition, a third strain of data-wiping malware dubbed “CaddyWiper” has been observed in attacks against several dozen systems at various organizations in Ukraine. Also, in a separate incident, Reuters reported last week of a cyberattack that interrupted satellite broadband Internet access in Ukraine on February 24.
An army of hundreds of thousands of hackers across Ukraine
With all this, Mykhailo Fedorov, minister of digital transformation in Ukraine (very active on Twitter throughout this conflict), launched a message on February 26 on Twitter in which he asked for the help of “digital talents” to create an “Army IT of Ukraine”. A Telegram group coordinates them, and there are already hundreds of thousands of users who have joined this initiative.
We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here: https://t.co/Ie4ESfxoSn. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists.
— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022
The Guardian has published that yesterday that Telegram channel reached 300,000 hackers who have wanted to join the cause of the people of Ukraine against the invasion and subsequent war. The Telegram channel is called IT Army of Ukraine. If you enter Telegram you will see that it is easily accessible.
You have to remember that Telegram, which is an app whose founder is Russianalthough at odds with the Putin government for a long time, is proving to be a key app to keep people connected in Ukraine, as it is widely used in the country.
Alp Toker, director of NetBlocks, has said that “collaborative attacks have been successful in disrupting the Russian government and state-supported media websites. [ruso]”. Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey, is not so optimistic about this huge army of hackers. According to him, “at best, they only create interference. They may be a nuisance to the Russians, but the attacks we have seen so far they have not really affected the Russian fighting ability with no decisive effect.