One of the dogs of war that has so far not barked during the war in Ukraine has been a full-scale Russian cyber offensive. For the past eight years, Ukraine has been on the receiving end of one of the most sustained and vicious hacking campaigns in history. According to Microsoft’s 2021 Digital Defence Report, 58 per cent of all nation state cyber attacks in the world that researchers were able to identify came from Russia. Some security experts expected that the outbreak of war would be accompanied by a huge Russian cyber assault. But, if anything, Ukraine has been taking the fight to the Russians in the cyber domain. Ukraine is now hacking back.
To help protect Ukraine’s cyber infrastructure, the country has been admitted as a contributing participant to Nato’s cyber defence centre, where it can share knowledge and expertise.
Some big tech companies are also lending a hand. For example, Microsoft has helped to alert Kyiv to cyber attacks and protect against malware. Yet perhaps the most striking feature of this cyber conflict has been how Kyiv has mobilised support of thousands of hackers, or “hacktivists”, from around the world. Ukraine’s government has launched an “IT army”, co-ordinated on the Telegram messaging app, to strengthen cyber systems and conduct cyber espionage against Russia.