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Ever since the Ukrainian "Maidan" revolution, the country has been subjected to waves of punishing cyberwar attacks, targeting its power grids, finance ministry, TV networks, election officials, and other critical systems.
These attacks are believed to originate with "Sandworm," a skilled hacker group associated with the Russian government. As bad as the attacks have been, they could have been far worse: the captured malware shows that the attackers only deployed some of their capabilities.
This has led the people defending Ukrainian systems to hypothesize that the attacks are a combination of live fire exercise -- to evaluate the weapons' efficacy -- and public warning to the US and NATO about Russia's capabilities, should either power attempt to curb Russian ambitions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The capabilities on display are impressive and could be deployed against the highly automated US power grid and other systems, where security is more advanced, but where there is much more to secure. Doing so would likely provoke an intense response from the US government and military -- the much-vaunted "cyber-deterrence" that is meant to be keeping the fragile peace in nation-states' networks and systems.
www.wired.com/story/russian-hackers-attack-ukraine/
These attacks are believed to originate with "Sandworm," a skilled hacker group associated with the Russian government. As bad as the attacks have been, they could have been far worse: the captured malware shows that the attackers only deployed some of their capabilities.
This has led the people defending Ukrainian systems to hypothesize that the attacks are a combination of live fire exercise -- to evaluate the weapons' efficacy -- and public warning to the US and NATO about Russia's capabilities, should either power attempt to curb Russian ambitions in Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
The capabilities on display are impressive and could be deployed against the highly automated US power grid and other systems, where security is more advanced, but where there is much more to secure. Doing so would likely provoke an intense response from the US government and military -- the much-vaunted "cyber-deterrence" that is meant to be keeping the fragile peace in nation-states' networks and systems.
www.wired.com/story/russian-hackers-attack-ukraine/
