Main Highlights of the Week: October 17-23

Executive summary

Since the beginning of the year, the government computer emergency response team CERT-UA, which belongs to the State Service of Special Communications of Ukraine, has registered more than 1,700 cyberattacks. ¹ Despite numerous cyberattacks on critical information infrastructure, russian hackers failed to achieve any strategic goal. Ukraine demonstrates considerable resilience in cyber warfare. ²

The country’s cyber resilience is the result of the joint work of all sectors of society. Its key component is the involvement of the Government, public organizations, academia, the private sector and society in general in this process. Oleksandr Potiy, Deputy Head of the State Service of Special Communications, said this at the conference “Building the Resilience of Society by Increasing Public Awareness of Cyber Threats and Increasing the Role of Cyber Education” at the Polish representative office of the OSCE in the city of Lodz.

According to him, during the russian war against Ukraine, one of the most important tasks is to ensure the cyber resilience of business and critical information infrastructure objects, which form the basis of the cyber resilience of the state.³

In turn, the head of the State Service of Special Communications, Yury Shchygol, warns that the role of ordinary citizens during cyberwar should not be underestimated. Every Ukrainian can become a target, a window through which hackers will get into the information system of a state body or company whose activities are critical for millions of people. Therefore, it is everyone’s duty to follow the rules and recommendations on cyber security developed by the state.¹

Ukraine in Cyberspace

The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) liquidated an enemy bot farm in Dnipro, which created almost 10,000 fake accounts to “disperse” Kremlin propaganda in the EU. ⁴
As part of the Cyber Security Month in Ukraine, the State Service of Special Communications has created a special website cybermonth.cip.gov.ua, where you can find useful information on cyber security for all groups of Internet users, including those who plan to make cyber security as their profession. ⁵
Ukrainian experience of confrontation in cyber war is now of high value in the world. On October 25, as part of the month of cyber security in the EU, the State Service of Special Communications of Ukraine will share the details of our cyber resilience with European partners. ²
Switzerland allocates over 500 million hryvnias for digitalization of ⁶

Cyber attacks on Ukraine

Phishing/Malware:

Phishing mailings allegedly on behalf of the SSU with an offer to download programs allegedly to strengthen cyber protection and destroy viruses were recorded. ⁷
A cyber attack on state organizations of Ukraine using the RomCom malware was detected. There is a ossible involvement of Cuba Ransomware aka Tropical Scorpius aka UNC2596. ⁸

Cyber attacks on russia

Dos/DDos:

The site http://aeroexpress.ru/ has been broken. ⁹
The IT army of Ukraine carried out attacks on ¹⁰ russian banks and brokers, and for several days, on the eve of the deadline for submitting a single simplified declaration, kept the online services of the federal tax service of russia unavailable. ¹¹

Data leakage/destruction:

The group Anonymous reported the publication of 1.2 terabytes of confidential russian data, including information on key russian national security infrastructure, plans for cyber security strategies and other related data. ¹²