Russia Steps Up Cyberwar Against Ukraine
Since before the start of Russia's failed invasion in 2022, Ukraine’s national infrastructure - beginning with the electricity supply and telecoms - has suffered from Russian cyber attacks. These have targeted the logistics, health care, agricultural and retail sectors, making it more difficult for Ukraine to produce and distribute food and medicine to its population.
Frequent attacks against media, telecommunications and Internet providers make it harder for the country to keep its populace well informed about attacks using conventional weapons.
Those conducted against Ukraine’s energy providers and storage facilities undermine its ability to keep its population warm and able to work. However, Russia’s Winter cyber warfare campaigns have not limited their scope to targeting Ukraine-based entities alone - they have frequently affected neighbouring countries that support it.
Now, the threat intelligence experts at Cyjax has published new research titled 'The Cyber Winter of Discontent' which analyses the conflict in Ukraine makes predictions as to how Russia may conduct cyber military activity over winter this year.
It finds that Russia is facing a crisis of resources and manpower and with Ukraine receiving a steady supply of defensive weapons and technology from the West, Russia may struggle to effectively deploy malware against its critical national infrastructure at scale. Cyjax think that Russia may turn its attention to more cost-effective tactics outside of the region in an effort to disrupt supply chains and deter the West from supplying its ally.
In particular, analysts at Cyjax have made multiple predictions on how the country will strategise over the cold months:
- Russia will likely choose to keep some cyber attack resources in reserve rather than exhausting them all during this war, to ensure that they retain offensive and defensive capabilities should they be invaded themselves.
- Hacktivism will be a core component of Russia’s campaign, due to its low operational cost and the level of plausible deniability.
- Cyjax has observed a number of hacktivist groups increasing in activity namely: UserSec, SiergedSec, NoName057, AnonymousSudan, AnonymousRussia, and Killnet.
- In an effort to disrupt military supply chains in 2024, Russia will continue to target the CNI of Ukraine’s allies; it is likely cyber defences outside of Ukraine have remained comparatively weak as they have not been so heavily targeted in comparison to those of Ukraine.
- Cyjax has observed many pro-Kremlin hacktivist collectives switching their targeting away from Ukraine to attacks on organisations based in Israel and those countries supporting it.
“The West’s support to Ukraine’s cyber defences has stagnated Russian attacks, putting the Russia in a difficult position as it struggles to find resources for a cyber and kinetic attack... which is why it makes sense that it would turn its attention to western critical infrastructure to induce war fatigue and disrupt supply chains" according to Roman Faithful, Cyber Intelligence Lead at Cyjax.
Although military experts anticipate less activity on the ground over the winter period, businesses and cyber security experts should be on their guard for any irregular activity and bolster their defences across the cyber and information space over what could be a very difficult winter in Ukraine.
Image: Alexandra Koch
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