Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine, the cybersecurity community is banding together to provide any relief it can to the citizens of Ukraine.
Hundreds of executives, cyber influencers, and government officials are offering free tools and assistance to help the Ukrainian government and its people defend against Russian cyberattacks.
Anonymous, the decentralized international activist and hacktivist collective, announced it will be the latest organization to join the efforts in fighting back against Russia. The following Twitter thread was posted yesterday:
Ukraine asks for volunteer hackers
The Ukrainian government is asking for any volunteers from the country's hacker underground to help protect critical infrastructure and conduct cyber spying missions against Russian troops, according to Reuters.
Yegor Aushev, the co-founder of a cybersecurity company in Kyiv, says he wrote a post at the request of a senior Defense Ministry official who contacted him earlier this week:
"Ukrainian cybercommunity! It's time to get involved in the cyber defense of our country," the post read, asking hackers and cybersecurity experts to submit an application via Google docs, listing their specialties, such as malware development, and professional references.
Aushev's firm, Cyber Unit Technologies, is known for working with Ukraine's government on the defense of critical infrastructure.
Reuters reports:
"Aushev said the volunteers would be divided into defensive and offensive cyber units. The defensive unit would be employed to defend infrastructure such as power plants and water systems. In a 2015 cyberattack, widely attributed to Russia state hackers, 225,000 Ukrainians lost electricity.
The offensive volunteer unit Aushev said he is organizing would help Ukraine's military conduct digital espionage operations against invading Russian forces."
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