Mar 01, 2022 10:20:00

Many sites such as Russian government agencies go down after the formation of the Ukrainian 'IT army'

It is reported that the websites of Russian government agencies and companies went down before and after Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Fedorov announced the creation of the IT army, and some of them were inaccessible even at the time of writing the article.

After Ukraine recruits an “IT Army,” dozens of Russian sites go dark | Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/02/after-ukraine-recruits-an-it-army-dozens-of-russian-sites-go-dark/

Fedorov announced on Twitter on February 27, 2022 that he 'formed an IT army.' We set up a dedicated channel on Telegram, a messaging service, and created a list of attack targets called 'tasks' to solicit the participation of the general public.

We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. All operational tasks will be given here: https://t.co/Ie4ESfxoSn . There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists.

— Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) February 26, 2022

The task list includes the websites of private companies such as Russia's largest commercial bank, Sberbank , Russia's search engine Yandex , as well as government agencies such as the Russian Ministry of Defense and public services. Some of them went down as a result of cyber attacks, and access from home and abroad was temporarily unavailable or inaccessible.

In response to this, Russia is reportedly responding by completely blocking access to e-government portal sites from abroad. Doug Madley, president of network observation company Kentik, said on the morning of February 28, 'Rostelecom, Russia's largest Internet provider, has stopped access by BGP,' and the Russian government's IP address outside Russia I told you that I cannot access the website.

Rostelecom stopped announcing the BGP routes of Russia's e-government platform (AS196747) outside the country at 16:45 UTC (7:45 pm local) 26-Feb.

It hosts https://t.co/5SGGC5VSYi , a purported target of the #Anonymous hacking group. #UkraineRussiaWar https://t.co/ef5LpUDAMq pic.twitter.com/mumShxijOH

— Doug Madory (@DougMadory) February 27, 2022

'These sites are probably used almost exclusively domestically, so it's not a big deal that outsiders can't access them, but this is Russia's attack on the government's website. It means that we are taking defensive measures against. '

Although much attention has been paid to Ukraine's actions to attack Russian websites, Ukraine is also in a position to be attacked. On February 25, security company ESET reported that 'hundreds of Ukrainian machines have been infected with wiper-type malware that has never been seen before.' Similarly, security company NortonLifeLock reported that it has found malware targeting Ukrainian defense, aviation and IT services.