Volunteer Hackers Converge on Ukraine Conflict With No One in Charge

The hackers came from around the world. They knocked Russian and Ukrainian government websites offline, graffitied antiwar messages onto the home pages of Russian media outlets and leaked data from rival hacking operations. And they swarmed into chat rooms, awaiting new instructions and egging each other on.

The war in Ukraine has provoked an onslaught of cyberattacks by apparent volunteers unlike any that security researchers have seen in previous conflicts, creating widespread disruption, confusion and chaos that researchers fear could provoke more serious attacks by nation-state hackers, escalate the war on the...