Relevance. The intensified attacks on Russian cyberspace since the beginning of the military conflict on the territory of Ukraine entail quite negative economic and social consequences for the country. Hackers attacking Russian services from the territory of foreign states are aimed at undermining the foundations of the country's national security by their acts of destabilizing public and private web services, provoking interruptions in the manufacturing sector, failures in logistics centers, and warming up the migratory mood of citizens. Resources that are illegally displayed in the online space form a new shadow sector of the economy - the economy of hacktivism; therefore, the mechanism of hackers' work is of interest.    The purpose is to assess the information and reputational damage caused to the national economy by hackers in the course of the unfolding cyber war, as well as to identify the main trends in the shadow sector of the economy.   Objectives. The following tasks were set and consistently solved in the article: to assess the cyber activity of hackers in the Internet space from the beginning of 2022; to formulate the basic principles and goals of the work of hackers in the conditions of conducting a cyberwar; assess the main attacked sectors of the national economy; formulate a mechanism for generating a new shadow sector - the economy of hacktivism; evaluate the main consequences of hacker attacks and the amount of damage caused to the Russian economy.   Methodology. In the process of writing the work, methods of content analysis, graphical representation and data analysis, methods of systematization, generalization and analogy were used.   Results. An assessment of the increasing frequency of hacker attacks on the information resources of Russian organizations and users led to the conclusion that a new sector of shadow business, the hacktivism economy, continues to develop. The new shadow sector makes it possible to function anonymously in the information space and finance illegal acts in relation to national information security systems.

   Conclusions. The national information security system should be reviewed in the light of new hostile manifestations on the part of IT-provider countries. The high dependence on foreign manufacturers of information technology will not allow Russia to build its own powerful system of opposition to foreign hackers. Therefore, only a complete transition to domestic software will make it possible to level the existing risks of theft of information and resources from Russian web services.