Ukraine assembles an 'IT army' to attack Russia in cyberspace

• Ukraine is assembling a volunteer 'IT army' to launch cyber attacks against Russia.
• The group is mostly being organized through Telegram.

Ukraine has assembled an 'IT army' to launch attacks against Russia in cyberspace, calling on a citizen task force to shut down Russian sites.

The volunteer 'army' is being organized through Telegram, Tech Crunch reported, and, since its launch on February 26, now boasts over 220,000 members.

The effort may already have had some impact. A callout to shut down the application programming interface – the software that connects computers and computer programs – for Sberbank, a major bank in Russia, resulted in its site going offline, Tech Crunch reported.

Amid reports of denial of service, or DDoS, attacks on other Russian government sites, the official website of the Kremlin, Kremlin.ru, was also taken offline Saturday, Reuters reported.

The Telegram channel, which lists at least 31 Russian business and state organizations, according to Reuters, allocates a number of cyber targets to various members of the 'brigade'.

Russia's allies are also a target for the group. Belarus' official information policy site went down after a callout was posted in the Telegram channel, Tech Crunch reported.

The 'IT army' did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's vice prime minister and digital transformation minister, tweeted about the 'army' Saturday, writing "We are creating an IT army" and that "there will be tasks for everyone."

A former Ukrainian official with knowledge of how the cyber attack coalition is organized, told WIRED that it was created in response to Russian cyberattacks.

Reuters first reported that Ukraine had been calling on its hacker underground to protect the country from Russian cyber spying missions since the beginning of the invasion last week.

Other hacktivist groups, including Anonymous, have targeted Russia in the previous few days. The Telegram channel has adopted those groups' satirical style of messaging in response to Russian media reports of the cyber attacks.

"'Unbelievable cyberattacks hit Russian governmental services portal, Kremlin, Parliament, First Channel, Aerospace, Railroad websites on February 26th,'" Tech Crunch quoted the group as writing. "'Fifty plus DDoS-attacks contained over one terabyte capacity.' Who has done that? ;) what a pity accident."