New Delhi/ Kiev, Feb 28 (IANS): Facing massive cyber-attacks from Russia-sponsored threat actors, Ukraine has now assembled an 'IT army' tasked with specific cyber challenges, which reached nearly 2 lakh users on Telegram on Monday.

Called the 'IT Army of Ukraine', it is also using the Telegram account to reach out to technology leaders to help the country fight Russian cyber-attacks and shut down Russian sites and their agents.

"A call out on the channel to shut down the API for Sberbank, one of Russia's major banks, appears to have come into play, with the site currently offline," reports TechCrunch.

The Ukrainian government officials are also endorsing the 'IT Army', tweeting out the Telegram link.

"We are creating an IT army. We need digital talents. There will be tasks for everyone. We continue to fight on the cyber front. The first task is on the channel for cyber specialists," tweeted Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation.

The cyber war between Russia and Ukraine has intensified, with Russia using a new destructive malware to permanently destroy data on systems belonging to Ukrainian organisations.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to hacking groups increasing their activities globally. While Russia-backed hackers have already hit several Ukrainian government websites and banks, a leading hacking group, Anonymous, has declared itself aligned with "Western allies", targeting operations in Russia.

"The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government," the group tweeted.

According to the IBM Security X-Force team, they have obtained a sample of the new and destructive 'HermeticWiper' malware being deleted on Ukrainian systems.

Belarusian state-sponsored hackers are also targeting the private email addresses of Ukrainian military personnel amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Ukraine's Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-UA) said in a Facebook post that a mass phishing campaign is targeting the private accounts belonging to Ukrainian military personnel.