Open source software has become a weapon of protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine: it is the hacker world, mobilized in support of Zelenskyy’s country, that transforms it into a means to create new and unpublished cyberattacks, identified as protestware and aimed at targets in Russia.
Sberbank, a Russian state bank, was also targeted: with one statement published online, the heads of Russia’s largest banking group they denounced the risk represented by the spread of infected programs, inviting customers to avoid updating software in order not to fall victim to cyber attacks. If necessary, users are advised to perform a virus scan or to proceed with a source code control on computers to remove any malware, a difficult and almost prohibitive maneuver to perform for those who do not have the right skills.
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In most cases, the protestware attack is limited to demonstrative actions by posting messages against war, for peace and in solidarity with the Ukrainian population, displayed on the desktop. However, in early March, a change to the Npm softwareoperated by a developer known as RIAEvangelist and made available on GitHub, has included code capable of destroying the file systems of computers with Russian or Belarusian IP addresses.
Despite the justifications of the author of the protestware, he was quickly spotted and has the harmful extent is minimizedthe gesture sparked a critical reaction from the open source community: many fear effects on the credibility of the ecosystem of free softwarewhich many programmers use and which is the basis of many projects for the development of digital technology and the Internet.
The one of RIAEvangelist it is perhaps a questionable operation, which could set a dangerous precedent as feared on the GitHub forumbut reflects the reality of an extraordinarily large mobilization among the ranks of hacker activism in the story of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
The collective Anonymous took the field, from the beginning, declaring the cyberwar against the Russian government and attacking various targets on a global scale, most recently the Swiss multinational Nestlé, accused of continuing to do business in Russia. Not only that: they would be over 400 thousand international volunteers who responded to the call by the Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, to build an anti-Russian IT army.
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But also on the other side of the fence pro-Russia groups have formed and activated, such as the fearsome Conti ransomware gang, to launch destructive cyberattacks against the enemy. In an escalation of involvement that intensifies the cyber call to arms of this now almost totally digital society.