Main Highlights of the Week: June 14-20

Foto — pixabay.com

Executive summary

About half of the cyber-attacks in the world, according to Microsoft, are directed against government agencies. Ukraine is no exception. Our civil servants receive letters from the representatives of Chief Intelligence Department and FSB members more often than from their colleagues from other countries.

ъAt the same time, the enemy is aware of what it is doing: letters are often disguised as important information about the rules of social protection or new statements by the political leadership.

During the world’s first cyber war, hackers never managed to find a weak spot and gain access to Ukrainian registries or critical infrastructure.

We stand because the state has long increased cyber resilience: through international cooperation, changes in legislation, strengthening staff and equipment [1].

Ukraine received a score of 75.32 in the National Cyber ​​Security Index and ranked as the 24^th one in the ranking. The aggressors of the russian Federation and the Republic of belarus received only 71 and 53 in the rating [2].

Since the beginning of the full-scale russian invasion, 688 cyberattacks have been recorded in the Ministry [3].

Since the beginning of the war, Kyivstar has been regularly attacked: dozens of attacks a week. 70-80 attacks in the company are considered large-scale. For example, the May 9 attack lasted 29 hours. [4].

According to a new CyberCube report, national cyber threats are expected to increase in the coming years. The number of nation-states that now consider cybercapacity key to their strategic national goals is growing, and many nation-states are rapidly developing their capabilities.

Current estimates suggest that the global damage from cybercrime will reach $ 10.5 trillion by 2025 [5].

Strengthening Ukrainian Cybersecurity

• Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov and the new US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink agreed on further cooperation: the United States will continue to support and develop digitalization and cyber defense of Ukraine, as well as important work to protect Ukraine, its people and democratic future.

The United States was one of the first countries to offer assistance during the cyber attack on January 14, which the State Service of Special Communication considers to be the beginning of an active phase of russia’s war against Ukraine in cyberspace. Currently, leading American IT companies are helping Ukraine to resist the aggressor [6].

Weakening of russia in Cyberspace

• belarusian opposition hackers «Cyber-guerrillas» were able to hack the secret servers of the Department of Operational Investigation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of belarus, which contained recordings of wiretapping of russian embassy staff for 2020-2021 [7].

• During the St. Petersburg International Forum, Stanislav Kuznetsov, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank, said that since the beginning of the war, hackers have been attacking russian resources more actively: the number of hacker attacks has increased about 15 times. As a result of their activities, the data of 65 million russians were stolen, 13 million cards were compromised, the reissue of which will amount to at least 4.5 billion rubles [8].
• The US Department of Justice, together with law enforcement partners from Germany, the Netherlands and Britain, eliminated the infrastructure of the russian RSOCKS botnet, which hacked millions of computers around the world [9].

Cyber attacks on russia

The Ukrainian army attacked more than 400 russian online resources between June 13 and 19 [10]:

Economic forum with putin’s speech. The attacks forced putin’s speech to be postponed for an hour. This spoiled his meeting with military correspondents and reduced the amount of disgusting propaganda.

• Regional courts of the russian Federation
• Sites of terrorist organizations in Ukraine
• russian media

Hackers Anonymous:

• hacked russian drone companies [11]

Other:

• the Internet service of the russian VDTRK with a call to stop the war was broken [12]
• the site of the «Supreme Court of the DNR» was hacked [13]
• posting of a fake address on behalf of the First Deputy Head of the Administration of the President of the russian Federation Sergei Kiriyenko in the russian edition of Izvestia [14]