Let’s be honest – nowadays cyberattacks are not a surprise for any of us. We are slowly getting used to deepfakes, info leaks, disinformation used for way more critical things than creating memes with politicians or celebrities. In one of my previous articles, I already presented one of the cases of deepfake usage by russian authorities, aimed at President V.Zelenskiy.
However, unfortunately, it was not the only digital attack used by russians after invasion. On Friday, 29 April, Romanian key public institutions experienced a series of cyber attacks, including the Defense Ministry. According to Romanian authorities, the attack was not that serious and all the data is protected. They also claim that russian Killnet hacking group is responsible for that. However, Romania is not the only country suffering from russian cyber attacks recently. Czech Republic also experienced similar issues with websites of the Czech government, Czech Interior Ministry and police, firefighter departments. No data was leaked as well.
Obviously, most of russian cyberattacks were aimed at Ukraine. According to Microsoft analysis – there were more than 237 operations, majority of which were stopped by Ukrainian intelligence. What is interesting, that these attack usually come “in pack” with missile strikes and shelling of some of Ukrainian cities. It is done on purpose. For example, on March 1st it was a great attack on media companies in Kyiv, after which, in the same day, Kyiv TV Tower was hit by a missile.
“It’s been a relentless cyberwar that has paralleled, and in some cases directly supported, the kinetic war,” Mr. Tom Burt ( leads the Customer Security & Trust team) said . Hackers affiliated with Russia were carrying out cyberattacks “on a daily, 24/7 basis since hours before the physical invasion began,” he added.
As of me, the war that is happening on the ground and the missiles flying on the sky of residents of Mariupol, Melitopol, Odesa, Kharkiv, Kherson, Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities – more terrifying and heart-breaking than cyber attacks. On the other hand, we should not forget that the data, especially the one from key institutions of the country, is important – it can literally influence Ukrainians lives.
What do you think about this? Are cyberattacks influential enough to change the outcome of the war? Is it a new form of war, never experienced before?
References:
https://balkaninsight.com/2022/04/29/cyber-attacks-hit-romanian-government-websites/
https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/04/27/hybrid-war-ukraine-russia-cyberattacks/
It is so weird to realize how the humanity developed so much and in the end we use these innovations for creating new way of war