Moscow users of Google Maps were greeted earlier this week with something they rarely see: photos of horrific scenes from Ukraine, including bombed out homes and injured civilians, and of captured Russian soldiers. The images showed up in the “latest photos” tab of landmarks on the app until Google blocked new photos from its maps of the region this week.
While a blockbuster cyber attack from Russia has so far failed to materialize, hacktivists have waged dozens of digital skirmishes. The Ukrainian government has created a volunteer “IT Army,” attracting hundreds of thousands of people who have knocked major Russian websites offline and helped distribute an air raid siren app. Never before has a government crowdsourced hacktivists in this way, and in a country already teeming with expertise; Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest markets for remote software engineers, with an estimated 200,000 tech employees.
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