Check out this article about our Aircorridor! Aircorridor began as a member of our Cyber Cossack School in Ukraine and now is a full-time staff member of Hackers-Arise. Check out how he and other young Ukrainians are resisting Putin’s brutal attempt to bring Ukraine to its knees. We are very proud of you, Aircorridor! Slava […]
The post Volodymyr, the Ukrainian hacker who sabotages Moscow between two video conferences first appeared on Hackers Arise.
Check out this article about our Aircorridor! Aircorridor began as a member of our Cyber Cossack School in Ukraine and now is a full-time staff member of Hackers-Arise.
Check out how he and other young Ukrainians are resisting Putin’s brutal attempt to bring Ukraine to its knees.
We are very proud of you, Aircorridor!
Slava Ukrainii!
Originally published by La Tribune on 15 July 2025.
Author: Bogdan Bodnar
Source: La Tribune article
THE CRACKS OF HACKING (1/4). At the age of 25, Volodymyr leads a double life between
telecommuting for an American company and night-time cyberattacks against Russia.
Like him, young Ukrainians have joined an unofficial digital army that has become a pillar
of the resistance.
Volodymyr closes his computer after a final videoconference with New York. He watches for
a moment as the sky slowly fades behind his window, then turns on another machine to
indulge in his favorite activity: hacking Russia. “They have so many time zones that we can
attack them in our spare time while they’re still asleep over there in the east of the country,” the young hacker quips. “One of my favorite tricks? Bringing down the entire system of a huge shopping mall in a town near Siberia,” he adds.
Like many young Ukrainians, Volodymyr works remotely for American technology
companies, attracted by this cheaper, skilled workforce. From his apartment in the Ukraine,
the 25-year-old trains other employees in the basics of cybersecurity, before devoting
himself, after dark, to the discreet exploitation of vulnerabilities in Russian networks.
Ukrainian cyberwar volunteers
Many Ukrainians lead this double life, torn between two imperatives: pursuing a life and
career focused on the West, and committing themselves, as far as possible, to the defense
of Ukraine against its bellicose neighbor to the East.
Volodymyr doesn’t act alone, he’s part of a collective. “There are about ten of us, all young
people, most of them employed by Western companies. We coordinate our operations,” he
explains.
Their group came together quickly, through acquaintances of acquaintances, shortly after
the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, now three and a half years ago. “At the time, I had just
finished my studies as a developer. I was already hacking around a bit, so I had a few basics,” he recalls. Volodymyr prefers not to dwell too much on this self-taught training. “I knew how to get into a system, bypass a few security barriers and test whether I had the knack, but that didn’t mean I was doing any harm,” he says.
He was quick to put these skills to good use when the Ministry of Digital Affairs issued a
call for all qualified people to join the conflict, including in cyberspace. An organization, the
IT Army of Ukraine, was quickly created, with the support of the authorities, to structure the action, designate Russian targets and offer simple tools enabling everyone
to carry out elementary attacks. In short, to turn hackers into hacktivists
From individual commitment to collective organization
The first weapon available is the distributed denial-of-service attack, or “DDoS” in
cybersecurity jargon. Simply put, this involves using a program connected to a network of
devices to divert all connections to a single platform. Saturated with requests, the platform
eventually collapses. Both the Ukrainian and Russian sides engage in DDoS on a daily
basis. “That was our first step. Back then, we had fairly specific targets: blocking propaganda media. One day we’d take down a news site, the next a public service. The aim was to stop Russians listening to Putin’s rhetoric, and to make them realize that the war was affecting them too,” says the young hacktivist.
But this method quickly shows its limits: the effect is brief, the impact quickly fades. The
conflict takes hold and drags on. A new phase begins: that of intelligence.
“War in cyberspace inevitably evolves with physical conflict. Once the chaos of the initial battles has passed, the ambient noise dies down, and room is made for more discreet, better-targeted attacks, often involving espionage. These are less visible operations, but they are nonetheless acts of war in their own right”, analyzes Pierre Delcher, head of Harfang Lab’s threat research team.
Each side is entrenched in its position, seeking to gain the upper hand. All information
becomes strategic. “We’ve trained and perfected our attacks. Sometimes I train on my lunch
break,” explains the hacktivist. He explains that “cameras have become an interesting
target, especially commercial and security devices installed in public spaces. By discreetly
breaking into street cameras, I can get an overview of traffic, and more importantly, observe
enemy movements. Once I have stable access, I pass it on to the army for their use. “It’s a lot easier to spy on you than you think,” he adds, before huffing, “but make no mistake, the Russians do just as much.”
From computer hacking to drone jamming
Ukrainian security services report that in the first four months of 2025, there have already
been over 2,000 cyber incidents, a 76% increase on the same period last year. According to
the National Cyberattack Warning Center, Russian offensives mainly target civilian infrastructures, with the aim of harming the population.
Russia dealt a brutal blow to the Ukrainian network in 2024 when it shut down the country’s
main telecom operator for almost 48 hours, blocking calls and messages to over 10 million
Ukrainians. “This kind of attack reminds us that we can’t let our guard down, and that we mustn’t rest when the situation seems a little calmer.
His next step? “Drone jamming,” says Volodymyr. Another type of technology, another type
of network, and a move away from pure cyberspace and into electronic warfare. “I’ve been
studying the signals emitted by drones for some time now, to understand how they
communicate. Once we’ve mastered that, we can update military systems or devices, and
transmit these solutions to regions that lack anti-aircraft defenses to bring down war machines without firing a shot,” he explains. In three years, the young hacktivist will have gone from crashing a news website to neutralizing a weapon of war. A pragmatic evolution, at a time when Russia is stepping up its attacks: in the last week of May, more than 900 drones were launched against Ukrainian cities. For Volodymyr, hacking is “quite simply a question of survival”.
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