Main Highlights of the Week: October 24-30

Executive summary

The world lacks more than 4 million cybersecurity professionals, and it will take time to solve this problem. All developed countries of the world are working on improving education in this field and overcoming the problem of personnel shortage. Ukraine is no exception. Every year, almost 50 departments in educational institutions of Ukraine graduate about 2,000 masters, specialists and bachelors in cyber security. But both the state and business constantly talk about the lack of personnel on the market. The problem of the quality of personnel is caused primarily by the fact that in the formal education of Ukraine there are only two specialties for which higher education institutions train students, namely “Cyber Security” and “Information Security”. This is not enough for the market to receive specialists with a full range of expertise. ¹

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 their profession. This approach corresponds to the best international practices and will contribute to increasing the institutional capacity of Ukraine for cyber protection²

Currently, there are three groups of those who carry out cyber-attacks on Ukraine:

The first, the most dangerous, are military hackers. This is a group of special services of the russian federation, which work purposefully on the infrastructure of our country, carry out orders and have serious resources.
The second group is cybercriminals who cooperate with the government of the russian federation, but pursue their mercantile goals.
The third is hacktivists, people with different skill levels who unite for attacks.³

Ukraine in Cyberspace

State Service of Special Communications initiates a system of professional standards and education reform in the field of cyber security in Ukraine. ²
Ukraine is integrating into the EU digital market. ⁴

russia’s Position in Cyberspace

According to Surfshark, russia is currently the most hacked country. About 110 million russian accounts were hacked last quarter. The number of hacked accounts of russians began to grow rapidly since the beginning of the year – by as much as 136% in the month since the end of February. In the last three months, hackers hacked 14 accounts per second. ⁵

The state sector and the organization of critical infrastructure of russia are interested in ethical hackers. A rapid increase in the number of russian bug bounty programs is expected in the near future. The prerequisites for the further growth of the market are the increase in the number and complexity of cyber threats, the unavailability of many global services in russia, as well as the expansion of the range of organizations resorting to bug bounty: this method of ensuring cyber security began to be used by small companies and state institutions. ⁶
Just before the November 1 election, russian hackers Killnet tried to hack the Knesset website and left a message explaining that the attack was in response to support for Ukraine. ⁷
russian mass media, citing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the occupiers, spread disinformation that “the US is carrying out cyber attacks against russia by the hands of Ukrainians”. ⁸

Cyber attacks on russia

Dos/DDos:

The IT army of Ukraine attacked the resources of the federal tax service of russia, Sber ID, and gained access to the data of the russian group of companies FTNET. ⁹^,¹⁰^,¹¹

Leak of the Information:

Ukrainian hacker group Cyber.Anarchy.Squad hacked the russian company Firma 1C and released part of the stolen database, which contains 18,425 records about russian users, including logins, passwords, names, email addresses, dates of registration, last login and whether the account is actively used or not. ¹²

Deface:

Hackers hacked all the key TV channels of russian propaganda in the occupied Crimea and showed a video of the destruction of russian ships. ¹³
Hackers hacked one of the satellite television providers in Novosibirsk and broadcast an appeal from the Armed Forces of Ukraine to the russian army with a proposal to surrender and resist mobilization. ¹⁴