Russian military hackers have been targeting mobile devices of the Ukrainian soldiers in a bid to steal sensitive battlefield information.

The invaders hope that this information can help them in their war against Ukraine, CNN reports.

Also, according to the VOA, Russia is using fraudulent websites to collect personal data of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen and their relatives.

The new advisory from the U.S. and its “Five Eyes” allies – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom – corroborates a report from Ukraine’s SSU security service that found the Russian hackers sought to infiltrate the Android tablets that the Ukrainian military used for “planning and performing combat missions,” CNN reports.

The Russian hackers’ malicious code was designed to steal data sent from mobile devices of the soldiers to the Starlink satellite system. It’s unclear just how successful the hacking effort was.

Ukraine’s SSU security service found that to spread the “viruses”, the enemy relied on the capture of Ukrainian tablets on the battlefield. Later, the Russian invaders planned to use the accesses and programs available on these devices to penetrate the combat data exchange system of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. In total, the SSU detected almost 10 such hostile spyware programs.

Fraudulent websites for collecting military data

Also, two Pentagon officials told VOA that Russia uses fraudulent websites to collect personal data of Ukrainian servicemen and their families. In their opinion, Russia can use the collected information, in particular, against family members of military personnel living in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

U.S. officials claim that Russian intelligence services have created at least two fake websites that pose as support resources for families of captured, missing, or killed Ukrainian soldiers and allegedly help with their search.

Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Ukraine, confirmed to VOA that the two sites in question were fraudulently collecting information.

However, according to him, there are many more fake resources that try to obtain personal data of relatives of the military. For this purpose, Russia also uses Telegram channels and groups on Facebook and Viber.

According to Pentagon officials, the Russian Federation uses the names, phone numbers, and addresses of Ukrainians obtained through these resources to determine whether any of the military or their family members live in the temporarily occupied territories. Such resources are also used to extract information about Ukrainian servicemen who have been captured.

However, not all fraudulent websites belong to Russian special services. Some of them are run by fraudsters who are trying to cheat people out of their money. Therefore, the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War in Ukraine urged relatives of the military not to pass any information to unverified persons and to trust only official websites.