"While Russian missiles and tanks attacked Ukrainian cities, enemy hackers tried to collapse critical infrastructure, energy, and financial sectors, as well as public services" - Mykhailo Fedorov (Minister of Digital Transformation) about the first days of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation.
Since the first Russian missile strike on Ukraine on February 24th, the war has been ongoing not only on the military front but on the informational and digital as well.
The latter is successfully managed by the IT Army of Ukraine, which the Ministry of Digital Transformation created almost immediately after the full-scale invasion, along with IT Stand For Ukraine, Army SOS, Creative Sich, and other organizations.
This initiative was joined by Ukrainian tech companies, thousands of cyber volunteers, and individual specialists. They formed cyber groups for one purpose — to protect their state and people.
Despite the complexity, the cyber community balances life, work, and volunteering. Some started volunteering in their free time, and others switched to working part-time to dedicate more time to cyber warfare.
Increasingly, more companies offer flexible schedules: for example, you can work in the morning and evening and hack one more Russian website during the daytime.
Companies are trying to continue their usual operation, pay taxes in advance, and do everything to keep the economic backbone of our country safe. The tech community spares no resources and does everything possible to bring Ukraine's victory closer.
What Ukrainian Cyber Groups Do
In addition to protecting Ukrainian cyberspace, the tech community went on a counter-offensive. Hundreds of cyberattacks were carried out, and various secret databases, websites of state bodies, and key enterprises were hacked.
Coordination occurs through various social networks and internet platforms, particularly Telegram and DOU.ua. Ukrainian specialists have already hacked more than 80 databases that are critical for the aggressor country: these are databases of citizens and businesses that contain sensitive data.
A significant part of tech companies in Russia suffered. For example, "VKontakte" can’t even buy servers to meet its own needs.
The cyber community organizes multimillion-dollar fundraisers for the needs of the military and refugees and also creates useful applications for Ukrainian citizens, such as Swedes for Ukraine (it connects Swedish hosts with Ukrainian refugees), Bezyl (it helps to support mental health), and dozens of others.
Tech volunteers from the Army SOS organization have developed software that helps the artillery fire better and faster. The cyber army also created a system for intelligence planning and coordination on the battlefield — ComBat.
It allows you to monitor the movement of soldiers and units during combat missions in real-time, give instructions, and understand the state of a particular soldier or group.
The IT Army Of Ukraine is a community of tech specialists from all over the world who united after the start of a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia.
Specialists of various levels have created and continue to create automated systems of attacks on information resources and services of an enemy country. During the 6 months of the war, the IT Army blocked more than 6,000 online resources.
IT Stand For Ukraine is a public IT organization that unites more than 1,000 Ukrainian specialists in technical, creative, and other fields.
They create useful applications and bots to help Ukraine and its citizens, as well as websites, to fight propaganda, and conduct DDOS attacks on various Russian resources.
Creative Sich is a project that unites and coordinates creative industry specialists to fight on the information front. The goal of the organization is to convey important messages about Ukraine to the world.
The participants of Creative Sich create posters, memes, edit videos, write texts, help posts to rise in the algorithms of social networks, and perform other important tasks that help bring Ukraine closer to victory.
How Do Volunteers Rationally Allocate Their Time?
According to IT volunteers, on average, they spend 15-20 hours a week on volunteer projects, that is, it is like a part-time job.
“I usually do this in the evening/night, and early in the morning. Volunteer projects are not as complicated as work projects, which can take weeks to develop. They are quite simple, these projects are aimed at launching quickly because they are needed right now. On those volunteer projects where I worked, no one thought about any complex features. Everyone understands that it is all based on initiative, and therefore no one puts a lot of burden on people there. If something is too difficult to do, it is postponed, it is all discussed. The idea is to launch quickly, not to develop something complex. It is not the same as with commercial projects, where there are long stages, etc.”
Vitaly Haritonsky, back-end developer
One of the projects in which UA IT Hub and IT Stand For Ukraine involved specialists on a volunteer basis is OkupantovNet – a solution that counts occupier's losses.
“I worked on it for about a week, but it was a full day because I had no other projects to work on at that time. Therefore, with the volunteer ones, I don't know what the distribution of time is. I spent my working time on them, but when I already had non-volunteer projects, or I was involved somewhere to help, half a day I was working on one thing, on those that were needed in the first place, then I was engaged in volunteer work.”
Anastasiia Dydyliuk, front-end developer
Valuable information was shared with us about a very important project related to the tracking of all aid that comes to Ukraine. Requirements are currently being collected for this tracking system, as this is a very large project.
A large number of specialists, especially those with managerial skills, are involved in its implementation.
According to Nika Tamaio Flores, Head of Consulting at Data Science UA, Chairwoman of the Board at IT Stand For Ukraine, the company is actively preparing the ground for this project - they are negotiating with various organizations.
There are plans to sign a memorandum with the SBU and the General Staff. The contract with the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine is already ready. This project is very useful, as it will be possible to track where humanitarian aid comes from and where it goes.
"It is difficult to say how many specialists are involved in this project, probably hundreds, but everyone has other work besides this class, so it takes approximately 20-50% of the working time."
UA IT Hub As a Volunteer Sponsor
Ukrainian company UA IT Hub appeals to businesses in North America and Europe to use Ukrainian tech expertise for their development needs. The company was founded on April 15, 2022, and already at the beginning of May, the first client was already here.
UA IT HUB helps those who lost their jobs due to the war by gaining new clients and providing career opportunities. This company enables talented technical specialists to realize themselves and to show the indomitability of the Ukrainian people even during such difficult times.
UA IT Hub pays for the work of specialists on volunteer projects as regular working hours.
"From mid-May to mid-July is when big growth happened: we signed our first major client and established many processes (HR, project management, client onboarding, etc). At the end of July, we have 15 people working full time on board".
Ivan Kosyuk, CEO at UA IT Hub
The purpose of UA IT Hub is to find project work for Ukrainian techies who require extra schedule flexibility due to the realities of war. UA IT Hub does not set strict working hours, and all specialists work remotely. An IT specialist must be communicative and able to establish a work process with colleagues.
UA IT HUB’s CEO Ivan claims that Ukraine is an excellent place to do business: firstly, the tax and salary documentation is easy; secondly, there are good incentives for new digital business (such as no income tax for the first few years).
“I love devising new ways to create value for others. I do it through business-making services and products that make the life of users better while allowing both professional growth and decent salaries for employees. This is what makes me happy and why I don’t draw the line between work and everything else”.
Many companies were interested in getting to know UA IT Hub and expressed their support. With many of them, partnership relations were established thanks to the organization’s approach.
UA IT Hub seeks to understand business needs more profoundly and identify new potential opportunities.
The organization has full-time employees, but some are unable to work full-time due to involvement in volunteering. Some engineers require additional time to work on technological initiatives for their government, such as creating both defensive and offensive cybersecurity systems.
The UA IT Hub assembles IT teams with the perfect balance of skills and time availability to meet the demands of businesses. A wide range of skill sets—from machine learning to cybersecurity to app development—are represented in the company.
To ensure the programmers and designers stay in sync with the project timeframe and other customer requirements, UA IT Hub offers a layer of project management and coordination.
The company publishes the project requirements and other details online as soon as a project becomes available. A team of engineers is then assembled according to the project's requirements, considering skill sets, and job availability.
As Ivan Kosyuk states, the company is currently training leaders for various departments. In 1-2 months, UA IT Hub will be ready to hire developers with little or no experience, as they will have mentors to guide them.
UA IT Hub is engaged in various interesting projects. One of the most distinguished among them is a project in the field of online medical care. The company helped to turn the client’s idea into a full-scale feature breakdown, use case documents, and to design mockups, which allowed the client to make a reasonable decision about the next steps.
Afterward, UA IT Hub specialists went in to develop an MVP and a landing page to attract more stakeholders to the project.
Another interesting blueprint planned is a project in environment-friendly living aimed to connect people, businesses, and government into a digital ecosystem.
For UA IT Hub, this is a unique experience, as they researched a wide range of solutions around the globe to come up with a roadmap and then go from a simple app to a full-fledged marketplace with carbon credits, sponsored events, and government integration.
The future of this project is yet to be decided, but the business insights were exceedingly valuable to their partner.
Currently, Ukraine has suffered significant losses from Russian aggression. As noted by Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, the amount of damage suffered by Ukraine's infrastructure due to the war reached 104 billion dollars.
Seeing the opportunity to apply their expertise and joint efforts, the founders of UA IT HUB together with representatives of the Canadian architectural company WZMH, united to find a solution for the reconstruction of the country and cities.
In the past few months, a number of Ukrainian Architects (who recently arrived in Canada) joined the work team, along with tech professionals from UA IT Hub. They developed a modular solution for rebuilding apartment complexes throughout the country - including new greenfield solutions.
Working together encouraged new ideas and innovative solutions and how to implement the concept in Ukraine.
For now, the company plans to expand its international presence by media means, as well as to create a robust network of Ukrainian digital businesses to provide clients with any related services (marketing, financial research, PR, etc.).
UA IT Hub is the personification of all Ukrainian people who are united for a common purpose.
So we urge you to help the Ukrainian people in the fight against the invaders. You can donate to one of the organizations, spread the word to bring the truth to more people, or even join the cyber community to destroy the enemies on this front. Any of your support will bring Ukraine closer to victory.