Officials from Ukraine's defense ministry last week
approached Ukrainian businessman and local cybersecurity expert Yegor Aushev to
help organize a unit of hackers to defend against Russia, Reuters previously
reported.
On Monday, Aushev said he planned to organize hacking
attacks that would disrupt any infrastructure that helps bring Russian troops
and weapons to his country.
"Everything that might stop war," he told Reuters.
"The goal is to make it impossible to bring these weapons to our
country."
Aushev said his group has already downed or defaced dozens
of Russian government and banking websites, sometimes replacing content with
violent images from the war. He declined to provide specific examples, saying
it would make tracking his group easier for the Russians.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a "special
operation" that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy
its southern neighbor's military capabilities and capture what it regards as
dangerous nationalists.
A Ukrainian defense attache in Washington declined to
comment on Aushev's group or its relationship with the defense ministry. Aushev
said his group has so far grown to more than 1,000 Ukrainian and foreign
volunteers.
The group has already coordinated with a foreign hacktivist
organization that carried out an attack on a railway system.
After word spread of the formation of Aushev's team, the
Belarusian Cyber Partisans, a Belarus-focused hacking team, volunteered to
attack Belarusian Railways because they said it was used to transport Russian
soldiers.
The Cyber Partisans disabled the railway's traffic systems
and brought down its ticketing website, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday.
On Monday, a Cyber Partisans spokeswoman told Reuters the
group carried out those attacks and confirmed her organization was now working
with Aushev's group.
The spokeswoman said because her group had brought down the
reservation system, passengers could only travel by purchasing paper tickets in
person. She sent Reuters a photo of a paper, handwritten ticket issued on
Monday.
"We fully side with Ukrainians," she said.
"They are now fighting for not only their own freedom but ours too.
Without an independent Ukraine, Belarus doesn’t stand a chance."
Reuters could not confirm attacks against the Belarus
railway's traffic system. The company's reservation website was down on Tuesday
afternoon. A railway spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Officials at the Russian embassy in Washington did not
immediately respond to a request for comment.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a
Russian news outlet on Tuesday that Russian embassies were under cyberattack by
"cyber terrorists from Ukraine."
Beyond striking back at Moscow, Aushev said his team would
help Ukraine's military hunt down undercover Russian units invading cities and
towns.
He said his group had discovered a way to use cellphone
tracking technology to identify and locate undercover Russian military units
moving through the country, but declined to provide details.