Ukraine has created a so-called IT army. This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Twitter on Saturday. Through a Telegram channel, people can join the digital army. At the time of writing, the channel has more than 220,000 subscribers.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov posted the following on Twitter, "We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here: https://t.me/itarmyofurraine. There will be tasks for everyone. We will continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task on the channel is for cyber specialists."
The Telegram channel "IT ARMY of Ukraine" is sharing lists of websites important to Russia. They include websites of companies, banks and the Russian state. The list includes the websites of Gazprom, Yandex, Gazprombank, the Kremlin, the Defense Ministry and media watchdog Roskomnadzor, for example. The Telegram channel calls for cyber and DDoS attacks on the targets.
The IT ARMY of Ukraine is asking for help in finding possible targets via the Telegram channel. The search is mainly for oligarchs, but the army is also calling for sharing Instagram accounts and phone numbers of close relatives of oligarchs, celebrities and opinion leaders.
The IT army is out to do as much damage as possible. Thus, the channel follows recent developments and responds accordingly. As many Russians convert their crypto into euros and rubles, important money exchange offices have been shut down. Also, the IT Army sees Russian citizens massively collecting money from ATMs. Therefore, it is calling for the DNS savings bank to be attacked, allowing the army to do "enormous damage."
The Telegram channel contains messages in Ukrainian, which are also translated into English "for all IT specialists from other countries."
In addition to major Russian websites, the IT ARMY of Ukraine also names YouTube channels. The intention is to shut down YouTube news channels that openly spread falsehoods about the war in Ukraine. Again, a list of links has been posted. The IT Army adds a roadmap with instructions on how to report the channels. Part of the roadmap includes enabling a VPN, since most of the channels are not available in Ukraine.
Through the Telegram channel, the IT Army is also calling for a "huge information business in Belarus about real events in our country." Belarusian citizens would not know what is actually happening in Ukraine, according to the IT Army.
On the Telegram channel, Ukraine's IT army shares what successes it has achieved. Among others, the website of the Sberbank was taken down, as well as the website of the Belarusian Information Policy.
Saturday afternoon, the Kremlin's official website was down. This was presumably the work of the hacker group Anonymous, which previously announced cyber attacks on the Russian government.
The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) reports that it "so far has no concrete indications" that "digital attacks related to the war in Ukraine are currently impacting the Netherlands." However, the NCSC does "not rule out possible consequences and attacks in the Netherlands in the future."
