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Not directly related to the call for an international IT army, but one thing I can’t wrap my head around with Ukraine’s call for hackers is how can they coordin

Not directly related to the call for an international IT army, but one thing I can’t wrap my head around with Ukraine’s call for hackers is how can they coordinate anything? Presumably Russian state aligned hackers are out there, pretending to be white hats available to help, “oh yea, let us help setup your firewall.” What’s the game plan? To clarify, not saying it’s a bad idea, just that I don’t understand how it is supposed to work

throwuxiytayq 5y ago
One thing about inviting the whole world to help is that they massively outnumber the target (and make no mistake, the whole world is responding). The west has enough hacking and DDOS capability to take out all of the Russian targets. At this scale, and with this much redundancy, coordination becomes unnecessary - it's more of a contest about who does most damage.
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
As for the those who travel it would be very different and perhaps more clear cut. For the cyber, what they could do is provide a rough guide about where to focus their energy on, how to pick targets, some opsec lessons, some legal disclaimers. I doubt they will give them a detailed list of targets and say hit Sberbank & Rosneft please, but more of a guide to fighters to assess their own capabilities and risks. Then based on that self-assessment which targets to self-identify and select, and also where to report to on a regular basis. I doubt it would be a collaborative environment where people who've never met share communication with other operatives. But it might become one if the war drags on (it probably does and in any case there is strong incentive to keep building on this afterwards) This is just speculation. In reality they might all be thrown into a couple of telegram channels and hope for the best. In fact maybe this could also be a great idea, because if you compartmentalize 1000 people with potential 20 Russian-friendly lurkers into 5-person chat channels you might get some sabotage but the benefits of team-work might outweigh the sabotage. Also your chances of people staying on because they're part of a team is bigger.

throwuxiytayq 5y ago

One thing about inviting the whole world to help is that they massively outnumber the target (and make no mistake, the whole world is responding). The west has enough hacking and DDOS capability to take out all of the Russian targets. At this scale, and with this much redundancy, coordination becomes unnecessary - it's more of a contest about who does most damage.

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

As for the those who travel it would be very different and perhaps more clear cut. For the cyber, what they could do is provide a rough guide about where to focus their energy on, how to pick targets, some opsec lessons, some legal disclaimers. I doubt they will give them a detailed list of targets and say hit Sberbank & Rosneft please, but more of a guide to fighters to assess their own capabilities and risks. Then based on that self-assessment which targets to self-identify and select, and also where to report to on a regular basis. I doubt it would be a collaborative environment where people who've never met share communication with other operatives. But it might become one if the war drags on (it probably does and in any case there is strong incentive to keep building on this afterwards) This is just speculation. In reality they might all be thrown into a couple of telegram channels and hope for the best. In fact maybe this could also be a great idea, because if you compartmentalize 1000 people with potential 20 Russian-friendly lurkers into 5-person chat channels you might get some sabotage but the benefits of team-work might outweigh the sabotage. Also your chances of people staying on because they're part of a team is bigger.