The war in Ukraine began February 24, 2022 when Putin marched his troops from Belorussia to invade Ukraine and attempt to capture the Ukraine capital, Kiev. The brave Ukrainians resisted this invasion and pushed back Putin's troops. Within minutes of the war starting, Ukrainian officials made a request of the hackers of the world to assist their efforts resisting the Russian aggression. We, like thousands of other, responded! The Ukraine/Russia war has become the most sophisticated cyberwar in history!
As many of you know, Hackers-Arise played an active hacking and critical leadership role in the first year of the Ukraine/Russia Cyberwar. Hackers at Hackers-Arise and others allied with us, were able to shut down the Internet access to many major government and business facilities in the early weeks of the war. This may have been the largest DDoS attack in history! Russian officials have vowed retribution on us. We made it very difficult for government facilities in Russia to communicate with each other and limited the Internet access from many major companies in Russia such as the Moscow Stock Exchange.
We soon moved into locating the Russian oligarch's massive yachts and notifying NATO of their location. This included Putin's yacht, La Datcha, as seen below. Many of those yachts were then seized by NATO and can now be sold to raise funds for the re-building of Ukraine after the war.
In addition, we began to attack many of the Russia industrial facilities (SCADA/ICS) resulting in many of them starting on fire and, a few, blowing up.
At the request of officials in Ukraine army, we were asked to hack IP cameras across Ukraine to spy on Russian activities and war crimes. We successfully did so.
Norway Public Television did a documentary on this cyber war and featured Hackers-Arise. Although it is in Norwegian, the section featuring Master OTW is in English. You can watch it at the link below.
Our efforts continue to assist the citizens of Ukraine by training the next generation of hackers in our Cyber Cossack in Kharkiv, just 40 km from the Russian border.
Summary
Our activities in Ukraine exemplify our definition of a white hat hacker. We are not here to test the security of institutional networks but also--when the siren sounds--to help protect the sovereignty of a people throwing off the chains of authoritarianism. The people of Ukraine want to be free and we believe we have a responsibility to help where we can.
