Atlas VPN hands out VPN subscriptions to support journalists in Ukraine

LEWES, Del.—Virtual private network provider Atlas VPN has announced that is handing out its Premium VPN subscriptions to journalists in Ukraine until the ongoing crisis with Russia is over.

“The recent wave of cyberattacks directed at Ukraine urged the Atlas VPN team to share advice on how users can protect themselves against these types of attacks,” the company announced on its website. “Moreover, we want to show our support to journalists and media personnel in Ukraine by handing out our Premium VPN subscriptions.”

Atlas VPN noted that on February 15, a large-scale wave of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks knocked down the websites of the defense ministry, army, and Ukraine's two largest banks, PrivatBank and Oschadbank. A week later, on February 23, another DDoS attack took down multiple Ukrainian governments, military, and bank websites, although this time, the outages lasted shorter, according to the company.

The attack was supposedly carried out by the Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), according to the UK government and the U.S. National Security Council. With full-scale invasion now evident, more cyberattacks can be expected.

“As we stand for freedom online and beyond, we wish to help journalists who risk their safety to provide the most accurate information to the public,” “This way, media representatives can carry out their investigations online and share their findings while being protected by military-grade encryption, which will completely hide their online activities.

Atlas VPN noted that there are two benefits of using a VPN in this scenario.

“First, it protects individuals from being attacked by DDoS attacks,” the company pointed out. “This is especially important for independent reporters, who have no backing if they get targeted by threat actors.

“Secondly, neither their ISP nor other third parties will have any track of the reporter’s activities online, which, hopefully, will encourage them to share information even more openly, even if that is done under an alias or by private messages with media outlets.”

Journalists will receive a one-year Premium subscription of Atlas VPN, which also includes advanced security features like Tracker Blocker, Data Breach Monitor, MultiHop+, and many more.

If you are a journalist in Ukraine in need of a Premium VPN subscription, email Atlas VPN at pr@atlasvpn.com and the company will get back to you within 24 hours.