This is called hybrid warfare. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not only unfolding on the ground, but also online. And all means are good for obtaining information about the enemy. According to an article in financial times (FT), who knew the Ukrainian hacker Nikita Knysh, the technique used by his team is simple: create fake profiles of women on social networks to flirt with Russian soldiers and obtain their geographical position.
hackyoumom, (“hack your mother”, in English), is the name of the operation carried out by Nikita Knysh and his team made up of thirty Ukrainian hackers. Located first in Kharkiv, a destroyed city, the team had to repatriate to the west of the country. In an example described in FOOTthe team identified a Russian base near Melitopol in southern Ukraine, an area occupied by Russia.
Helped by Starlink
Using fake profiles of attractive women created on social networks, they entice Russian soldiers to send them photos of themselves. Some, not very attentive, were executed like this. In the photos sent, the objective is to recover all the details that could help to locate them. Subsequently, the Russian base in Melitopol was attacked by the Ukrainian army.
Nikita Knysh is a former SBU (Ukrainian security service) and head of the cybersecurity firm HackControl. To carry out this mission, she was able to take advantage of a Starlink satellite dish, the satellite Internet connection system belonging to Elon Musk. The richest man in the world provided Starlink kits to the Ukrainian military to give them free internet access. Nikita Knysh then asked one of Ukraine’s richest men, Vsevolod Kozhemyako, to provide one of hers.
Other missions were carried out by the group of pirates. They posed as admins on Telegram channels to broadcast pro-Ukrainian messages, hacked into thousands of security and traffic cameras in Belarus (an ally of Russia). In Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, the team has also increased threats of bomb attacks against flights from Serbia. The hacker also says that he took control of Russian TV channels to broadcast uncensored information about the war or videos that glorify Ukraine.
Source: BFM TV
