In a fine beautiful war zone of Ukraine with a fine gust of wind, when officials, customers, people of the country tried to log in to their respective government sites, there was CODE 404 of page not found stating that the “PAGE IS NOT FOUND”. Hackers doing their job I guess 😉
Cyberwar Declared Between RUSSIA and Ukraine
That was the message greeting visitors to dozens of Ukrainian websites on Wednesday afternoon. From 16:00 local time webpages for banks and government ministries started going down.
As forces massed on Ukraine’s borders, fingers were soon pointed at Moscow, with Russia’s cyber army once again accused of hacking to spread fear and uncertainty online.
Dmitry (not his real name) works for a well-known Russian cyber-security firm during the day. He finished his task helping protect his customers from criminal Hackers on Wednesday afternoon and went home for the night.
But, as he saw the cyber-attacks against Ukraine unfold, he decided to gather his hacking team and get to work. “In light of the fact that everyone is assaulting Ukraine’s servers. Isn’t it possible that we should also cause some havoc? “He made a social media post about it.
He claims that his group of six hackers then used distributed denial of service (DDoS) assaults to temporarily bring down a number of Ukrainian government websites.
Dmitry says they communicate on encrypted channels and “never speak in person” even though two of them work at the same cyber-security firm.” If my employer found out I would not have a job,” he says.
This Wasn’t The First Bit Of Vigilante Hackers Did In Recent Days
In the past week, Dmitry says they have carried out DDoS attacks, emailed 20 bomb threats to schools, hacked into the live dashboard feeds of an unidentified Ukrainian “rapid response team” and found a way to set up official emails using a Ukrainian government email service.
More Attacks On the Way
They are also warning of more disruption and distress as they release stolen undisclosed data.
“This is just the beginning,” says Dmitry, over an encrypted call, using a voice distorter. “You’ve got to understand we are being careful and watching what we do at the moment. We could launch ransomware but we haven’t yet.”
Ransomware assaults, which encrypt data on computer networks, are significantly more dangerous than what Dmitry and his colleagues have done so far. Katie Paxton-Fear, an ethical hacker and cyber-security expert, has reviewed the material given by the hackers.
“These hackers appear to be focusing on well-known flaws.” It’s as if they’re looking through a large pair of binoculars for flaws in whatever Ukrainian system they can uncover. “While the hacking they’re doing isn’t particularly advanced, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of causing a distraction to security staff that is already overworked and anxious.”
Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine has been routinely targeted by low-level cyber-attacks.
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