A loose group of thousands of technologists and hackers is attacking Russian services and websites—and scoring significant wins. On May 11, the website of RuTube, Russia’s largest streaming service and YouTube competitor, was taken offline for three straight days in what the company called the “largest cyberattack” it had ever suffered. At the end of the cyber onslaught, a volunteer group of technologists and hackers known as Ukraine’s IT Army claimed responsibility on its official Telegram channel, calling the attack “the biggest victory of the cyber war.” The hackers also claimed to have changed admin passwords, deleted and stole internal data, and even blocked employee’s access cards to the company’s server rooms, locking people in. Ever since it was launched just two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, the IT Army has claimed several victims, including Mvideo, a large Russian consumer electronics chain; QIWI, a popular Russian payment service provider; Asna, a network of more than 10,000 pharmacies in Russia; and EGAIS, the Russian government’s unified state automated alcohol accounting information system. (…) “The IT Army of Ukraine is a unique and smart construct whose organizational setup and operational impact will likely inform the art of cyber and information warfare in future conflicts,” Stefan Soesanto, a senior cybersecurity researcher at the The Center for Security Studies (CSS) in Zurich, wrote in a report about the IT Army. “On the public side, the IT Army serves as a vessel that allows the Ukrainian government to utilize volunteers from around the world in its persistent [Distributed Denial of Service] activities against Russian government and company websites. As of 7 June 2022, this includes 662 targets. On the non-public side, the IT Army’s in-house team likely maintains deep links to—or largely consists of—the Ukrainian defense and intelligence services.”
via vice: Inside Ukraine’s Decentralized Cyber Army
Von <a href=”//commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Miguelgamer_YT&action=edit&redlink=1″ class=”new” title=”User:Miguelgamer YT (page does not exist)”>Miguelgamer YT</a> – <span class=”int-own-work” lang=”de”>Eigenes Werk</span>, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link