The message "This site can't be reached" seems to be common on many Ukrainian sites these days. The main accusation is of course leveled at the Russian government, which in addition to physically bombarding Ukraine, is also in cyberspace.
However, not all cyber attacks were carried out by "official" Russian cyber forces. There are also private cyber forces that took part in attacking Ukrainian sites.
Reported by the BBC, Sunday (27/2/2022), there are many cyber attacks originating from individual Russian hackers who call their actions patriotic. These hackers operate in small groups without direct orders from the Russian government, and their goal is to wreak havoc on the Ukrainian cyber world to a shattered state.
Dmitry (not his real name) is actually an employee at a Russian cybersecurity company. On Wednesday (23/2/2022), after completing his official work, he saw a cyberattack against Ukraine.
He also took the initiative to form a team of hackers and participate in the cyber attack.
"Seeing all of them attacking the Ukrainian servers, I think we should be doing some damage too," he said on social media.
His team consisted of six hackers who succeeded in bringing down a number of Ukrainian government websites, by flooding the servers with distributed denial of services (DDoS) attacks.
Communication between team members was encrypted, and they never even spoke in person. In fact, two of them work at the same cybersecurity company.
"If found out I will be fired," he said.
The team not only carried out DDoS attacks, but also distributed emails containing bomb threats to various schools, hacked the car dashboard camera system of Ukrainian citizens who were members of the "rapid response team", and also succeeded in creating email addresses using the Ukrainian government email service, which will used to carry out phishing attacks.
Dmitry also assures that these attacks have only just begun, and will continue, which he expressed through an encrypted phone call and a disguised voice.
"We could launch ransomware, but we haven't yet," he explained.
Even though he did it secretly so as not to be caught, Dmitry hoped that Russian cyber forces would observe his actions. They hope the Russian government will appreciate his actions and look forward to working in Russia's cybersecurity agency.
"I think there are people in government who would be very happy with what we are doing. I would like to work for the Russian cyber authorities, but I need time to think about it first," explains Dmitry.