‘We want them to go to the Stone Age’: Ukrainian coders are splitting their time between work and cyber warfare

Hordes of Ukrainian coders are fighting a cyber war with Russia while doing their day jobs.

Over 311,000 people have joined a group called the IT Army of Ukraine on Telegram, where Russian targets are shared. A significant number of them are from Ukraine, according to members of the group who spoke to CNBC.

Dave, a Ukrainian software engineer who preferred to keep his name secret, told CNBC that the group has helped to carry out cyberattacks outside of their day jobs since the war started. Russian government websites, Russian banks and currency exchanges were targets.

He said that he was helping the IT Army with running attacks. A distributed denial-of-service attack is a malicious attempt to overwhelm a website with internet traffic.

He wrote a bot for himself that accepts website links and targets attacks on them whenever he pastes them in.

Dave says he just pastes a list of targets into a bot, which takes around an hour to create.

He said it was difficult to say how successful it has been since the attacks are carried out by thousands of people at the same time.

Dave is one of around 30 Ukrainians who work remotely. The company made work optional for its Ukrainian employees.

Oleksii told CNBC that he and his colleagues are working hard to keep the economy going. It has not been easy.

During the first days of war, the air raid sirens went off for 24 hours straight, and you can only think of your family and how to keep them safe.

Oleksii said he has averaged no more than two hours of work per day since the beginning of the Russian invasion.

Oleksii hopes to help his country win the cyberwar, as he is an IT worker.

Russian oil energy giant Gazprom and Russian bank Sberbank were among the targets of a distributed denial of service attack, according to a developer called Anton. The Russian government and Sberbank did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

It doesn't take an extensive period of time to put a service down because there are a lot of people who take part in attacking.

Nikita, a CEO and co-founder of a cybersecurity firm, told CNBC that he is in the IT Army of Ukraine Telegram channel. His firm works for clients around the world and has continued to work during the Russian invasion. They dopenetration testing and check IT systems for vulnerabilities.

Nikita told CNBC that he has been trying to get in touch with Russian citizens to tell them what is happening in Ukraine. He said that he and his hacking team are publishing Russian credit card details online.

Nikita said that they want them to go to the Stone Age and that they are good at it. He is grateful to the Russians who are helping Ukraine and he doesn't hate all Russians.

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Digital Minister of Ukraine, urged people to join the channel last month.

Yehor, a tech expert who works for an international cybersecurity company remotely from Ukraine, is also juggling his normal role with the cyber war.

He said that his company is trying not to push them on any timelines, and that some staff are still in the area of fighting.

I'm trying to make time for work and cyberattacks. I have more free time because my family is not with me.

One of the biggest software development hubs in Eastern Europe is Ukraine.

There is a cyber war. According to Check Point Research, online attacks against Ukrainian military and governmental sectors increased by 196% in the first three days after the invasion.

According to the data, they increased against Russian and Ukrainian organizations, but fell in most other parts of the world.

The Ukrainian government and military have been the target of most of the online attacks.

Moscow has always denied that it engages in cyberwarfare. The Russian embassy in Washington said that it has never conducted and does not conduct malicious operations in cyberspace.

Monica Buchanan Pitrelli reports.