The outages came as Ukraine’s vice prime minister said it
had launched an ‘IT army’ to combat Russia in cyberspace.
On Wednesday, a newly discovered piece of destructive
software was found circulating in Ukraine, hitting hundreds of computers,
according to researchers at the cybersecurity firm ESET.
Suspicion fell on Russia, which has repeatedly been accused
of hacks against Ukraine and other countries. The victims included government
agencies and a financial institution, Reuters previously reported.
Last week, Britain and the United States said Russian
military hackers were behind a spate of DDoS attacks that briefly knocked
Ukrainian banking and government websites offline before the Russian invasion.
Russia has denied the allegations.
Twitter accounts historically associated with Anonymous, the
amorphous online activist community that first grabbed global attention about a
decade ago, have also announced plans to take aim at Russia’s online presence.
Russia-themed leaks and hacks attributed to the group have
begun to percolate across the web — although as is often the case with
Anonymous and with other hacker collectives the authenticity of the claims
remain difficult to establish.
It is not unusual for freelance or ideologically motivated
hackers to jump into global conflicts on one side or another; similar actions
took place during the Arab Spring uprisings.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that the Ukrainian government
had put out a call to the hacker underground to help support its underdog effort
to beat back the Russians.