Russian robot farm sends messages to Ukrainian officers to persuade them to surrender

There is no doubt that Russia is one of the most sophisticated cyber aggressors in the world. In January, Ukraine accused Russia of being behind a cyber attack on about 70 Ukrainian government websites.

At the time, a message was posted in Ukrainian, Russian and Polish on the hacked websites saying "All your personal data has been uploaded to the public internet. This is about your past, your present and your future."

Now, it looks like Russia is behind yet another cyber attack, this time using a bot farm. The Ukrainian intelligence service announced on its Facebook page Thursday that Russian agents designed a robot farm that sent 5,000 SMS messages to the Ukrainian military and law enforcement officers asking them to defect and surrender to the Russians, according to an Interestingengineering report.

The report stated that it was not clear why the Russians believed such an attack would succeed, but the Ukrainian armed forces also revealed that the security service known for its acronym "SSU" (SSU) managed to shut down the Russian robot farm, or "special information operation" aimed at "Destabilization of the moral and psychological state of the Ukrainian security forces," the Facebook post said.

"As a result of current events, they refuse to support the nationalist and discredited leaders of the country who have already fled the capital," the leaflet directed to the Ukrainian armed forces said.

According to the report, the bot farm appeared to have the opposite effect as several officers reported the messages they were receiving, giving Ukraine another win as the operation was quickly neutralized by the security service.

However, there are still concerns that in the future Russia may use cyber warfare to paralyze Ukraine's infrastructure.

Reports have revealed that Russia's war on Ukraine involves cyber attacks against Kyiv government websites and affiliated organizations through various malware including but not limited to activating a data-wiping malicious program called "HermeticWiper". Will it be easy to avoid the next attack? ask the report.