It’s day five of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and many countries and people across Europe and the world have been offering to help to Ukraine in the ways that they can, not least the global tech sector.

Large tech companies such as Google, Twitter, Meta and SpaceX, among others. have been stepping in with their tech resources to help Ukrainian civilians protect themselves and putting pressure on Russia to halt its aggressions.

Here we look at some of the ways in which the tech sector is finding clever ways to use tech as an effective response to brute force.

Google Maps

A day after a Ukrainian agency urged citizens to remove traffic and road signs to confuse Russian troops, Google played its own part by temporarily turning off traffic data in Google maps.

A spokesperson told media outlets yesterday (27 February) that the traffic layer feature and live information on how busy places are had been disabled globally, after consulting with regional authorities, to help protect Ukrainian citizens trying to avoid encountering Russian troops.

These places include shops, restaurants, metro stations and other buildings where Ukrainian civilians might have taken to for shelter from Russian soldiers and missiles that have been making their in-roads in large Ukrainian cities over the past few days.

However, Google confirmed that the live traffic feature is still available to drivers using the navigation feature in the region, according to Reuters.

Dr Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury Institute in Monterey, California, tweeted screenshots of a live “traffic jam” near the Ukrainian border last week, hours ahead of the invasion, using Google Maps.

According @googlemaps, there is a “traffic jam” at 3:15 in the morning on the road from Belgorod, Russia to the Ukrainian border. It starts *exactly* where we saw a Russian formation of armor and IFV/APCs show up yesterday.
Someone’s on the move. pic.twitter.com/BYyc5YZsWL

— Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) February 24, 2022

Fedorov told Musk: “While you try to colonise Mars – Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space – Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!”

While Musk has announced that the service is now active with more terminals “en route”, it is not clear when they will reach or how many there are. Moreover, as one CNBC reporter pointed out on Twitter, Musk has a history of making false or inaccurate promises in times of need.

Cybersecurity

Amid an ongoing parallel warfare in the digital space between Russia and Ukraine, one Ukrainian researcher has taken the cybersecurity world by storm after publishing more than 60,000 internal messages of notorious hacker group Conti.

Conti, reported to be based near St Petersburg and operating from the eastern Europe region, was the same cybercriminal group responsible for the devastating HSE cyberattack last summer that crippled Ireland’s health services.

According to BleepingComputer.com, a Ukrainian researcher working for Conti was angered by a blog post made by the hacker group declaring its allegiance to Russia in the ongoing conflict – which didn’t go down well with him and other Ukrainians part of the group.

In response, he accessed the backend of Conti’s XMPP chat server and extracted 60, 694 internal messages of the group between 21 January 2021 to 27 February 2022.

The messages are expected to be a vital component of any investigation into the group. “With that said, it is also damaging to undisclosed victims who paid ransoms to hide their attacks, decrypt data, or prevent the leak of data,” BleepingComputers wrote in a tweet.

Meanwhile, activist hacker group Anonymous has also pledged to help Ukraine in its cyber fight against Russia.

Science

The world of scientific research has stepped in to the action, too, with after Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s best universities for STEM, announced that it is severing ties with a research university in Russia it helped establish a decade ago.

The university, known as Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, is based in Moscow and has close ties to the Putin government, according to an AP report.

Following the move, it will no longer be part of the MIT Skoltech Program after US authorities have long said the association poses a risk of espionage and technology theft.

With additional reporting by Sarah Harford

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