Mitigating cybersecurity risks and sustaining internet connectivity for hundred thousands of Ukrainian users in wartime

At the onset of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, technology organization eQualitie and NGO Internews Ukraine, with the support of the Government of Canada, joined forces to provide digital emergency support to civil society in Ukraine.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian users remained connected to the Internet during prolonged power outages resulting from Russian shelling, and the daily work of the Nadiyno Digital Security Helpline is now helping to quickly resolve problems in the digital space.

The first digital security helpline in Central and Eastern Europe for Ukrainians, Nadiyno.org

Figures: 1, 500 resolved cases, 66, 000 active users, almost 200, 000 visits to the site

"Welcome to the Nadiyno helpline. How may I help you?" For more than 9 months now, this is how every day begins for the operator, a cybersecurity specialist at the Nadiyno helpline. The service enables users to ask for help with problems in the digital space: protection of devices, personal data, secure communications, etc. Tens of thousands of users have taken advantage of the detailed digital security advice published in three sections of the website.

Since its launch (November 2022), operators have successfully resolved 1,500 requests, 66, 000 users have actively interacted with the site's functionality, and the total traffic to the platform has reached almost 200,000 users.

During this time, the project's experts helped to resolve hundreds of requests from both individuals and organizations. In particular, during power outages in the winter of 2022, our specialists prevented a massive attack by Russian hackers against a well-known non-governmental organization from Donetsk Region, ensuring the team's stable work in the digital space.

Protection of Ukrainian websites from DDoS attacks

Figures: 80 sites received DDoS protection

eQualitie offers Ukrainian civil society organizations, human rights defenders and media outlets free connection to Deflect.ca, a piece of software that counteracts massive DDoS attacks in times of war carried out at the domain and admin level. Representatives of Ukrainian civil society whose websites are powered by WordPress can also migrate to the free secure hosting service eQPress. The Deflect team has repelled dozens of powerful attacks made against Ukrainian websites and analyzed the scale of the attacks and the networks of infected computers from which the attacks were launched.

In the period of 2022-2023, we managed to protect 80 websites of media outlets, human rights activists and non-governmental organizations, including the websites of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, ZMINA Human Rights Center and many others.

Where the Internet does not work, CENO works

We introduced Ukrainians to CENO, a mobile browser that works on Android devices and helps users in the temporarily-occupied territories of Ukraine bypass the Internet censorship that is an integral part of Russian occupation.

The number of users who have installed the CENO browser on their Android devices in Ukraine has reached 14,000. Although almost 3,000 users are currently actively using the browser, each user in the main territory of Ukraine helps residents of the temporarily-occupied territories to access this information through the mechanism of "peer-to-peer" or "peer-to-peer networks" — content is uploaded to a distributed cache in Lviv, Kyiv or Dnipro, and users in Mariupol, Berdiansk or Melitopol are able to download pages of Ukrainian websites on their smartphones despite Russian censorship.

Nazar Tokar, a digital technology blogger, explained the key principles behind the browser in his video.

Decentralized communication launched in 9 Ukrainian regions

Figures: 10 decentralized servers on local providers' facilities for communication in an Internet-isolated environment

The dComms project offered Ukrainian users alternative ways to communicate in the face of censorship, interruptions and restrictions on the Internet. In 9 Ukrainian regions, eQualitie's technical experts offered dComms as a selection of six decentralized communication tools to keep in touch with family and friends even when there is no external internet connection.

The dComms services operate on local servers in nine cities of Ukraine, namely Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Lviv, Rivne, Kherson, Mykolaiv, Poltava, and Khmelnytskyi. Thousands of users communicate on instances of the federated social networks Matrix and Mastodon every single minute. At the same time, these services will be a lifeline for users in the extreme case of Ukraine's isolation from the external Internet — when access to the usual centralized services is not available.

Resilience of Ukrainian communications and the Internet

Figures: 100 participants

On May 26, 2023, together with eQualitie, we organized a conference that brought together key leaders of telecommunication companies, government representatives, and Western partners to discuss the urgent recovery needs of the telecommunication industry. Over 100 participants attended the event. The main partners were the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the State Special Communications Service.

Strengthening civil society and the media

Figures: 24 trainings

The team conducted 24 individual trainings and consultations on digital security for representatives of the most important organizations and media outlets so as to strengthen their digital security during the war. These include NGO “Women’s anti corruption movement”, NGO “Women of Steel”, CSO "La Strada-Ukraine", NGO "Ukrainian Union of people with disabilities", social organization “League Life”, Resource Center “Kolpinga”, NGO “Greencubator”, Ukrainian Catholic University, Vector Media, Juvenile Police, and many others.

Providing communication stability during power outages

Figures: 357 strong power batteries for 75 local providers

In partnership with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, DEPS Ukraine, and the Association of Rights Holders and Content Providers, eQualitie purchased and brought 357 AGM and Lithium batteries to Ukraine as humanitarian aid to power the fiber optic networks of providers in the absence of electricity for 72 hours. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian users remained connected in the 12 regions most affected by Russian aggression. The total budget of the assistance came to 125, 000 Canadian dollars.

The project will continue its activities in 2023-2024. We plan to strengthen our partnerships and integrate our efforts in order to make Ukraine's digital infrastructure resilient and help Ukrainian Internet users to counter unprovoked Russian aggression.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the Media Program in Ukraine, which is implemented by the Internews Network organization with the support of USAID.