For the first time in history, a detachment of thousands of so-called “white hackers” is working against the enemy.
“We’re launching a team and everything, we’re attacking the site,” said Alexander, a 25-year-old programmer who has been in IT for seven years and has been a real cyber warrior since the war began.
“Everyone has their own capabilities, someone sews knee pads, someone gathers food for the front, someone fights, and someone is engaged in the cyber front, this is the same front, in the XXI century – this is the same territory to fight for, and I can benefit more here than being with a weapon in hand “, – he is sure.
The guy says that although he is an IT member, he had no experience in cyberattacks, at first he understood, but soon he even created an author’s tool. With its help, even schoolchildren can attack enemy resources.
“It’s more like a wrapper for an existing application, but it was quite complex and ordinary users could not understand it, I decided to create an improved version, more understandable, and the total number of downloads is over 120 thousand,” says Sasha.
Today, there are many different IT tools to help counter the enemy in the digital world. The Ukrainian IT community mostly joins the so-called DDOS attacks. This is when a large number of users simultaneously enter the enemy site, it can not withstand the onslaught and “goes to bed”. What to attack – the cyber army chooses meticulously.
“Even if the enemy bombs our maternity hospitals or kindergartens, no hacker in the world would normally break into a maternity hospital in Russia or a hospital, because we are ethical people, we have no fascist desire to do harm to another country, civilians. . Our goal, first of all, is to stop military operations taking place on the territory of our state. That’s why everything related to Russian troops, and research, and things that can stop their arms deliveries, “said cybersecurity expert Yegor Aushev.
Hackers from all over the world are joining the Ukrainian cyberfront. “Even if the presidents of some countries are not ready to fight against Russia, against their threats, the people who live in different countries are ready to join and that’s what they are doing. We tried to count that today it is about 20 participating countries participating in this cyber confrontation. For example, Belarusian cyber guerrillas stopped the railway, connections, trains could not move to the border with Ukraine, it was very timely, “- adds Yegor.
Obviously, the Russians are very annoyed by the cyber-military attacks. It is not for nothing that social networks are being shut down in Russia, and in general they have decided to isolate their Internet from the global one, following the example of China. Meanwhile, both Ukrainian pensioners and teenagers are replenishing their daily cyber squads – fighting at the keyboard without restrictions. “I am a 5th year student at the Faculty of Dentistry, I thought that I would not be drafted into the army, I am not very good in the defense, I asked a lot about how you can help and people who told me told me what to install and where to write” , – the student-dentist Nikita tells.
At the same time, most Ukrainian IT companies are fulfilling another important mission – providing stable foreign exchange earnings as they continue to operate. “Infrastructure, reliable communication, equipment are very important for the IT business, it is very difficult and inefficient to work from the basement or adapted premises. This can negatively affect which service we provide. And we try to do everything to keep our customers working with us so that we can generate foreign exchange earnings for the country and pay taxes, ”said Andriy Yavorsky, Globallogic’s Vice President of Strategy and Technology.
Experts say that this year, even during the war, the IT sector will give the budget up to 20 billion hryvnias. In the field of 300 thousand specialists and the Ministry of Digital Transformation has already appealed to government agencies to release them from conscription, because the virtual army is no less important than it is.