Ukraine cyber group to strike at Russia’s critical infrastructure

A Ukrainian cyber guerrilla warfare group is planning to strike back against Russia, targeting the country’s critical infrastructure amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry asked the group, led by cybersecurity expert Yegor Aushev, to use its cyber capabilities to disrupt railways and electrical grids and stanch the flow of weapons flowing from Russia, according to Reuters. 

Aushev told Reuters on Monday that they will do what it takes to stop the war, including launching hacking attacks.

“The goal is to make it impossible to bring these weapons to our country,” he said, adding that his group has already targeted dozens of Russian government and banking websites. 

Aushev also said that his group has garnered more than 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign volunteers. 

The cyber warfare between the two countries has escalated in recent weeks. 

Ukraine was on defense last week after several of its government websites were hit by a cyberattack believed to originate from the Russians. 

Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, said the disruptions were “another mass [distributed denial-of-service] DDoS attack” that targeted local banks, the Parliament and the Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries. 

Ukraine has been the victim of Russian cyber aggression over the years.

In 2017, Russian hackers targeted Ukrainian banks, newspapers and companies with the release of the NotPetya malware virus. The attack, which spread across the world, was destructive and caused billions of dollars in damage.