Power lines are visible on a frosty day outside the city of Monchegorsk in the Murmansk region, Russia, October 31, 2019. REUTERS / Maxim Shemetov
WASHINGTON, Feb 28 – Ukraine’s cyber-guerrilla warfare group plans to launch digital sabotage attacks on critical Russian infrastructure such as railways and the power grid to retaliate against Moscow for its invasion, a hacker team coordinator told Reuters. .
Ukrainian Defense Ministry officials turned to Ukrainian businessman and local cybersecurity expert Egor Aushev last week to help organize a hacker unit to defend against Russia, Reuters reported.
On Monday, Aushev said he planned to stage hacker attacks that would disrupt any infrastructure that helps bring Russian troops and weapons into his country.
“Anything that can stop the war,” he told Reuters. “The goal is to make it impossible to import these weapons into our country.”
Aushev said his group has already demolished or disfigured dozens of Russian government and banking websites, sometimes replacing them with images of war violence. He declined to give specific examples, saying it would make it easier for his group to track the Russians.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” which it says is not intended to occupy territory, but to destroy the military capabilities of its southern neighbor and capture dangerous nationalists.
Ukraine’s defense attaché in Washington declined to comment on Aushev’s group or its relations with the defense ministry. Aushev said his group has grown to more than 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign volunteers so far.
The group is already coordinating with a foreign hacktivist organization that attacked a railway system.
After information spread about the formation of Aushev’s team, Belarusian cyber guerrillas, a Belarusian-focused hacking team, voluntarily attacked Belarusian railways because they said it was used to transport Russian soldiers.
Cyber guerrillas have deactivated rail traffic systems and toppled a ticketing website, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
A Cyber Partisans spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday that the group had carried out the attacks and confirmed that her organization was now working with Aushev’s group.
The spokesman said that since her group had downgraded the reservation system, passengers could only travel by purchasing paper tickets in person. She sent Reuters a photo of a paper, handwritten ticket issued Monday.
We are entirely on the side of the Ukrainians, she said. “They are now fighting not only for their own freedom, but for ours. Without an independent Ukraine, Belarus has no chance. “
Reuters could not confirm attacks on Belarus’ railway system. The booking company’s website is closed on Tuesday afternoon. A railway spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
Officials at the Russian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Russian news on Tuesday that Russian embassies had been subjected to a cyber attack by “cyber terrorists from Ukraine”.
In addition to retaliating against Moscow, Aushev said his team would help the Ukrainian military pursue undercover Russian troops invading cities.
He said his group had found a way to use cell phone tracking technology to identify and locate Russian undercover troops moving across the country, but declined to provide details.
Russian troops have reportedly used commercial mobile phones in Ukraine to communicate, according to numerous media outlets.
Over the past week, a number of Russian government websites have been publicly cut short by reported attacks in the style of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), including one for President Vladimir Putin’s office.
Report by Joel Shektman and Christopher Bing from Washington and James Pearson from London Edited by Kieran Murray and David Gregorio
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