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Users of electronic devices in a bomb shelter in Kiev: The government is looking for people with hacking skills
Photo: VIACHESLAV RATYNSKYI / REUTERS
In the war with Russia, the Ukrainian government is said to be calling on hackers to work for their home country.
The Reuters news agency reports, citing two people familiar with the matter.
An inquiry appeared in hacker forums on Thursday morning, which was apparently discontinued on behalf of the government.
»Ukrainian cyber community!
It's time to get involved in our country's cyber defense," the post said, according to Reuters.
According to the report, IT experts who are willing to protect the country's critical infrastructure or accept cyber espionage jobs against Russian troops are being sought.
Applications are possible via a Google Doc, it says, in which the volunteers can also provide professional references and their areas of expertise, such as malware development.
Yegor Aushev, co-founder of a cybersecurity company in Kyiv, told Reuters he wrote the post at the request of a senior Defense Ministry official, who also commented on it on Thursday.
Aushev's company, Cyber Unit Technologies, is known for working with the Ukrainian government to defend critical infrastructure.
Another person, who was also directly involved in the effort, according to Reuters, confirmed Aushev's statement that the request originally came from the Department of Defense.
Defensive and offensive departments
Yegor Aushev told the news agency the volunteers would be divided into defensive and offensive cyber units.
The defensive unit would be used to protect critical infrastructure such as power plants and water systems.
The offensive volunteer unit, which Aushev says he is building, will help the Ukrainian military conduct digital espionage operations against Russian troops.
"We have an army in our country," Aushev said.
"We need to know what they're doing."
According to Yegor Aushev, hundreds of applications from hackers have already been received.
They would now be checked to ensure that there was no Russian agent among the applicants.
Representatives of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense have not yet responded to a request for comment.
A defense attaché at Ukraine's embassy in Washington said he could neither confirm nor deny information about the call.
A new piece of malware has just been discovered
Ukraine's data protection commissioner said the number of hacking attacks against Ukraine is currently increasing.
"Phishing attacks on government and critical infrastructure, the proliferation of malware, attempts to penetrate private and public sector networks, and other destructive actions have increased," it said in an email.
IT security experts in Ukraine discovered new malware on Wednesday evening.
According to the IT security company ESET, a so-called wiper was installed on “hundreds of computers across the country”.
This type of malware aims to make the data on an infected hard drive permanently unusable (to wipe).
Read more about this attack here.
mbo/Reuters