As Ukraine continues to make efforts to mobilize and equip ordinary citizens on the ground to resist Russia's unprovoked invasion of the country, those who want to help are being asked to get involved in the fight in the virtual world. While the G7 mobilizes to shut down Russia's access to the Swift banking system, the country has been running a campaign to get developers to join their IT army. Specific calls have been made to technology leaders to do their part.
The IT Army of Ukraine gained almost 10,000 users in the time I wrote this story. It has a gmail address for people who are not using Telegram. We reached out to the organizers to find out more about the project.
It seems to be making progress. The site for Sberbank, one of Russia's major banks, is currently offline after a call out on the channel to shut it down. The official information policy site of Belorussia was also taken offline after a call out on the channel. It is taking a tongue-in-cheek approach similar to the one adopted by Anonymous and other activist hacker groups when going after specific targets.
Russian media reported that cyberattacks hit Russian governmental services portal, Kremlin, Parliament, First Channel, and Railroad websites on February 26th.
Word of mouth and endorsements from government officials are helping to discover the effort. It's not clear if the government is behind it.
We are creating an IT army. Mykhailo Fedorov is the Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation in Ukraine. We are fighting on the cyber front. The first task is for cyber specialists.
Fedorov is not wasting his time on social media. He has been demanding that Facebook and Musk use their platforms and existing products to help the efforts to ban access to their platforms in Russia and to give users a data backup. Musk has said that the Starlink satellites have been trained over Ukraine, but the Facebook ask seems to be going a little slower, at least so far.
Fedorov gave DMarket, where people trade NFTs and other virtual goods, a namecheck for freezing accounts for users from Russia and Belarus, because the proceeds could be used to support their efforts against Ukraine.
The country has a pretty bullish stance on cryptocurrencies, with the official account of the country publicizing addresses to take donations. Many people assumed that the account was hacked, but that has now been pinned and seems serious. There isn't a lot of information about how those funds would be obtained, and what they would be used for.
All of this shows how fast things move in tech, and how much depends on it working. It is an interesting counterpoint to the shutdown of the Swift financial messaging network, since it will need not just states to take a stand but also for the member institutions.
SWIFT is a neutral global cooperative set up and operated for the benefit of its community of more than 11,000 institutions in 200 countries. The decision to impose sanctions on countries rests with the competent government bodies. Swift said in a statement that they have an obligation to comply with EU and Belgian regulation. We are engaging with European authorities to understand the details of the entities that will be subject to the new measures.
Russia and its companies will not be able to transact for buying and selling goods if Swift access is lost. It took years for the last blockade against Iran to go into full effect.
Virginie O'Shea, an analyst and founder at Firebrand Research, said that being banned or removed from Swift would have an impact. She noted that Russia had previously tried to set up its own network for its banks, but it doesn't extend internationally at the moment.
Implementing the Swift resolution might take time because it will have huge implications for other countries, especially those who rely on Russia for products like gas and energy.
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