As Russia invades their lands, a band of Ukrainian hackers are reportedly invading Russian hearts — and using it against them.
Masquerading as women, a group of Ukrainian hackers opened up fake social media accounts to connect with Russian soldiers and dupe them into sending pictures in return, which often contained geolocations to help the Ukrainian military determine Russian positions on the battlefield, the Financial Times reported.
“The Russians, they always want to f***,” Nikita Knysh, a tech worker from Kharkiv told the Financial Times. “They send [a] lot of s*** to ‘girls,’ to prove that they are warriors.”
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Knysh stitched together a team of hackers, dubbed Hackyourmom, which is comprised roughly 30 hackers from across the war-torn country, he told the outlet. Hackyourmom has engaged in multiple cyber subterfuge campaigns against the Russians so far, according to Knysh.
“For me, this felt like combat,” Knysh continued. “With no money, with no brilliant software, and even no brilliant hacks — you can use fraudsters, the dark web against your enemy.”
In August, Hackyourmom engaged in a social media subversion campaign against Russian soldiers stationed in Melitopol. They posed as women on multiple social media platforms such as Telegram to persuade Russian soldiers to give them photos from the front lines, Knysh recounted.
After the Russian soldiers capitulated, Hackyourmom sent locations taken from the photos and delivered that intelligence to Ukraine’s military. Days later, Ukrainian forces attacked the base, Knysh told the outlet.
Ukraine’s military has not publicly verified whether Hackyourmom’s intelligence led to an attack on a Russian base in Melitopol, but there have been reports of an explosion at a Russian base in the area.
In addition to the social media campaign, Hackyourmom has also claimed responsibility for leaking databases of Russian military contractors and playing tricks on Russian TV stations to get them to display unfavorable information on the war, issuing fake bomb threats to Russian plans, and more, Knysh said. Hackyourmom was able to gain internet access from Elon Musk’s Starlink to carry out the cyberattacks.
“My first thought was — I am effective, I can help my country,” another member of Hackyourmom, named Maxim, told the outlet. “Then, I realized, I want more of this — I want to find more bases, again and again.”
Many of the hackers who joined Hackyourmom came from Knysh’s HackControl firm and conducted work out of a basement of a wallet factory in Kharkiv before moving to other locations as Russian forces began to take control of the city.
In the time since, much of the rag-tag team of hackers have reportedly been forced apart and have coordinated cyberinfiltration campaigns remotely.
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After incurring a string of setbacks during the early stages of the war while trying to subdue the capital city of Kyiv, Russia pivoted to the more Russian-friendly Donbas region in May. The Kremlin has since notched a slew of advances. But Ukraine has recently initiated a counteroffensive, hoping to liberate areas dominated by Russian forces in the south.
War broke out in Ukraine in late February.
