THE MINISTER OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF UKRAINE, MYKHAILO FEDOROV, BECAME THE HERO OF THE DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT THE UKRAINIAN IT FORCES “THE FIRST CODE”.
Yesterday, the shooting of a new episode of the most anticipated documentary film about Ukrainian IT technologies “The First Code” took place, the new hero of which was the Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.
The investigative film “The First Code” is a story of time travel through interviews with the heads of the most famous IT companies founded in Ukraine. The story begins with the creation of the first computer by Ukrainian engineers and continues to the present, when the IT sector has become not only a powerful industry, but also an important front in the war with Russia.
Mykhailo Fedorov gave a long interview to the author of the study, Vladyslav Savchenko, in which he talked about the cyber war with Russia: when the attacks on the Ukrainian digital infrastructure began, how the volunteer IT-army movement maintains defense on the cyber front, and how technology helps identify war criminals Buchi et al.
On his social pages, the interviewer of the film, Vladyslav Savchenko, published several stories in which Mykhailo Fedorov tells how his own Red-team began to “attack” the Ukrainian energy infrastructure a few months before the start of a full-scale war in order to check for vulnerabilities and fix them.
“In December, when the information wave about a possible full-scale invasion began, the world media wrote about hacker attacks on energy infrastructure. A few days before the New Year, we held meetings with all the people who are responsible for the IT sector in the energy sector. We engaged our Red-Team, which during January attacked our own energy infrastructure to find vulnerabilities. We prepared and understood the challenges of tomorrow.”
Fedorov also commented on Ukraine’s cyber resilience and repelling attacks from Russia.
“The war with Russia has been going on since 2014. Therefore, when we created the Ministry of Digital Affairs and set ourselves the goal of digitizing all services in the state, we understood that when you are at war, you understand that cyber war is a component of any war (and physical). Therefore, we did everything in such a way that all attacks in cyberspace could be contained. We remain in the cyber war and already understand the challenges of the future, what needs to be done. And a lot of fundamental things have already been done for the cyber resilience of the state.” The First Code was directed by professional film director Arthur Lerman, known for the films “Hero Zone” and “Bear Trap”. The screenwriter is Tetyana Burenko, a well-known television screenwriter-playwright. “Eyes” of the film – Evgeny Usanov. Vladyslav Savchenko, an IT entrepreneur and the author of the study, was the producer. Lyubov Mochalova became a creative producer.
The film crew has already talked with the founders of the companies EPAM Ukraine, 3DLOOK, ELEKS, Looksery, Sigma Software Group, SoftServe, NIKS, Uklon, Infopulse Ukraine, as well as with representatives of the V. M. Hlushkov Institute of Cybernetics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
The budget of the tape is six million hryvnias. Work on the tape is planned to be completed by the end of 2022 and negotiations will begin on its placement on the Netflix, Amazon, and Apple TV platforms.