These are days of growing tension in Ukraine following the conflict with Putin’s Russia, and if the worst price is being suffered by the people in the areas most affected by the clashes and bombings, the war is taking completely new forms. and cyberattacks are becoming an increasingly important part of the equation. Obviously we do not want to say that they are a novelty in the strict sense, but we are probably facing the first conflict which, in addition to the military and economic spheres, is also fought with great intensity on the IT front.
We have seen in recent days how Anonymous, the international hacker collective, has activated itself by targeting some Russian propaganda and state portals, but Russian responses and further initiatives from Ukraine are not lacking. Let’s see the main news of these hours.
RUSSIAN HACKERS COMPROMISE UKRAINIAN FACEBOOK ACCOUNT
It is news of the last few hours and it was released by the company behind the famous social network, Meta, according to which an increasing number of hackers are increasingly targeting some Ukrainian journalists and military officials. The initiative named Ghostwriter is not entirely new but is particularly catching on these days. The mechanism of action is rather classic and thanks to an email containing a malicious link, Ghostwriter aims to steal the access credentials of the target accounts and then publish disinformative articles and videos aimed at confusing public opinion and mystifying the initiatives of the Ukrainian army. The exact names of the affected characters have not been given in order to protect their privacy but there are several public profiles on the list.
Nathaniel Gleicher, head of Meta’s security policy, believes that Facebook users most at risk should take steps to protect their accounts, while verifying that their information has not been compromised with other applications and on other devices.
Mandiant Threat Intelligence did research on Ghostwriter as early as last year, claiming that several pieces of evidence suggesting the operation has ties to a cyber espionage group called UNC1151, most likely associated with the Belarusian government. “We cannot rule out Russian contributions to either UNC1151 or Ghostwriter. However, at this time, we have not discovered direct evidence of such contributions.”Mandiant Threat Intelligence said in a blog post.
In the meantime, Meta has made it known that it has stepped up the fight against disinformation and having deleted at least 40 fake Russian and Ukrainian accounts, which posing as editorial newsrooms and dissemination sites, proposed fake news. According to Facebook, the operation took place in time and the network of followers that revolved around these pages and profiles was still limited.
UKRAINE WANTS TO CREATE AN IT ARMY
Meanwhile, Ukraine is also trying to prepare to face this war on all fronts, including the IT one, and it does so by asking for support from all the volunteers available in the world with one order: launch cyber-attacks against Russia. The request for help came with a tweet from the Ukrainian minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, who on Twitter announces his intention to create an IT army. Not only that, with that post a precise organization is started through a Telegram channel created specifically for the purpose.
We are building an IT army. We need digital talent. All operational tasks will be assigned here: t.me/itarmyofurraine. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is available on the channel for IT specialists.
The channel IT ARMY of Ukraine currently boasts about 30,000 members and within it the use of DDoS attacks is urged. According to one of the many posts present, the cyber attacks organized thanks to this initiative have already made it possible to hit several portals of Russian government services, the Kremlin, Parliament and many other Russian realities. In other posts it is also urged to report pro-Russian Youtube channels to Google so that they can be blacked out more quickly.
image credits – The Register
