J 2022

Handling Internet Activism during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Campus Network Perspective

HUSÁK, Martin; Martin LAŠTOVIČKA and Tomáš PLESNÍK

Basic information

Original name

Handling Internet Activism during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine: A Campus Network Perspective

Authors

HUSÁK, Martin; Martin LAŠTOVIČKA and Tomáš PLESNÍK

Edition

Digital Threats: Research and Practice, New York, NY, USA, ACM, 2022, 2692-1626

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Article in a journal

Country of publisher

United States of America

Confidentiality degree

is not subject to a state or trade secret

References:

URL

Marked to be transferred to RIV

Yes

RIV identification code

RIV/00216224:14610/22:00125763

Organization

Ústav výpočetní techniky – Repository – Repository

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1145/3534566

UT WoS

001266114700001

EID Scopus

2-s2.0-85136955750

Keywords in English

Internet activism;DDoS;incident handling;campus network

Links

EF16_019/0000822, research and development project.
Changed: 29/7/2025 00:50, RNDr. Daniel Jakubík

Abstract

In the original language

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 raised an enormous wave of Internet activism and DDoS attacks launched with the help of common users across the world. In this paper, we describe the events of the first days after the invasion from the perspective of the cybersecurity incident response team of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. We observed hundreds of users intentionally participating in DDoS attacks against Russia from the university’s network. The campus network faced only minor issues in terms of service unavailability, but alerts flooded the cybersecurity team. Two dimensions of the events are highlighted. First, the large-scale attacks in an unexpected direction were highly unusual and brought technical challenges in network monitoring and intrusion detection. Second, hacktivism still violates the campus network’s terms of use and requires the cybersecurity team to communicate the issues very carefully with the community.
Displayed: 3/5/2026 12:30