The war in Ukraine is being fought not only on the battlefields of Donbass and the Kherson region, but also on the Internet. Russian soldiers in the occupied city of Melitopol are said to have fallen for fake profiles of Ukrainian hackers online. The result: a Ukrainian artillery strike.
According to a media report, a group of Ukrainian hackers wormed sensitive information out of Russian soldiers with the help of attractive photos of women. As the “Financial Times” reports, Moscow’s fighters fell for fake profiles of young women on social networks. According to this, the IT experts were able to precisely locate a Russian base in southern Ukraine.
Last month, the Hackyourmom hacking group suspected a remote Russian base in the occupied city of Melitopol, according to the report, which is based on photos, videos, log data and testimonies from several hackers and Ukrainian government officials. With fake profiles on Facebook and other platforms, the cyber experts are said to have ensnared Russian soldiers in the area and persuaded them to send pictures as well.
“The Russians always want to fuck,” the head of the hacking group, Nikita Kynsh, told the newspaper. “They send [a lot of] shit to girls to prove they’re warriors.” With the help of the photos received, it was possible to locate the base precisely. The information collected was made available to the Ukrainian military, said Kynsh, who says he used to work for the Ukrainian domestic secret service SBU.
A few days later, the base came under Ukrainian artillery fire. Kynsh did not say which base it is exactly. However, the portal “Ukrainska Pravda” reported at the end of August about the destruction of a large Russian military camp in Melitopol by Ukrainian troops.
Knysh told the Financial Times that his team was also responsible for other cyber attacks. Russian television stations are said to have been manipulated into showing clips about Ukrainian civilian casualties. The group is also said to have succeeded in penetrating the databases of Russian military companies.
