Ukraine Launches ‘IT War’ Against Russia, Kremlin’s Official Website Down

New Delhi: The war-torn country of Ukraine has launched a ‘IT army’ to combat Russia in cyberspace. The cyber war has reportedly brought down the official website of Kremlin, the office of Russian President Vladimir Putin, kremlin.ru, on Saturday.

This comes after there were reports of denial of service (DDoS) attacks on various other Russian government and state media websites, stated reports in national media.

Ukraine’s vice prime minister has said they lunched the ‘IT Army’ to fight the war in cyberspace too.

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, NDTV stated quoting Agencies.

Russia has, however, denied the allegations.

Meanwhile, ‘Anonymous,’ a cyber hacker group, declared a “cyberwar” against Putin’s administration as it launched a full-scale invasion of Kyiv. The hacking collective’s goal, according to international media, is to deactivate several Russian government websites.

The “Anonymous collective has taken down the website of the Russian propaganda channel RT News,” it added, confirming the RT.com hack.

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.

Similar actions were reported during the Arab Spring uprisings when freelance or ideologically motivated hackers jumped into global conflicts.