Main Highlights of the Week: June 6-13

Foto — pixabay.com

Executive summary

The quality of russian cyberattacks has declined, as russians are now thinking about how to protect their networks. Not indifferent hackers attack russian systems in cyberspace and it turns out that they are not as secure as reported in the last few years [1].

The state of protection in Ukrainian state institutions is different. Someone approaches this responsibly, has enough experience and expertise. Some people use separate protection tools, but do not approach the issue of protection comprehensively. Someone has no people at all, no money, no understanding of how to defend themselves. Some people lack the resources to protect [2].

Deputy head of the State Service of Special Communication of Ukraine Viktor Zhora said that there had been many attempts to hack the phones of Ukrainian officials, mainly to spread malicious software [3].

Currently, there are no official cyber troops in the Armed Forces of Ukraine that specialize in eliminating threats and attacking enemies. The concept of «troops» implies the presence of servicemen who perform specialized tasks with a single command, structure, hierarchy, coordination of actions, clearly defined tools, and methods of performing tasks. Military units need adequate funding, logistics, reporting, subordination, material, legal and regulatory support. While such troops are not in the structure of the Armed Forces, they mean units in the Ministry of Digital Transformation, the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Special Service, Cyberpolice, the National Security and Defense Council, the NBU, the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, and intelligence agencies.

russia also does not have cyber troops as such, there is only a mixture of intelligence officers and several hundred hackers recruited by them. Authorities allow criminals to hack Western banks and companies, but instead demand cyberattacks from enemy infrastructure. Such a system works with varying degrees of success due to corruption – budget money is stolen, and the remnants do not hire the most skilled professionals [4].

Strengthening Ukrainian Cybersecurity

• The State Service for Maritime and Inland Water Transport and Shipping of Ukraine in cooperation with the Ministry of Infrastructure has developed a service for downloading electronic copies of qualification documents of seafarers, which will be used to create backup databases on a local server.

russia’s Position in Cyberspace

• russia has stated the risk of a «direct military confrontation» with the West over cyber attacks. Director of the Department of International Information Security of the russian Foreign Ministry Andrei Krutsky said that cyber attacks against russia are carried out by more than 65,000 «sofa» hackers, as well as 22 organized hacker groups from Ukraine, the USA, Georgia, Poland and other countries [6].
• The Killnet hacking group, which is used by the russian FSB, consists mainly of teenagers [7].
• russian cyber special forces form new divisions to attack NATO. On 2 June, the group created a new Sparta division, which is responsible for cyber-sabotage, disruption of Internet resources, data theft and financial intelligence targeting NATO, its members and allies. The created division is an official part of the Killnet Collective [8].

Cyber attacks on Ukraine

Phishing / Malware:

Massive cyber attack on media organizations of Ukraine using the malicious program CrescentImp (sending emails on the topic «LIST of links to interactive maps») [9].

Cyber attacks on russia

The Ukrainian army attacked more than 450 russian online resources between June 6 and 12 [10]. Namely:

• The sites of state institutions of the russian Federation have been shut down.
• For a long time, information stored on the resources of rospotrebnadzor was unavailable.
• Unstable operation of the «My Documents» service.
• In the Crimea, the occupiers’ construction stores went offline, as online stores were unable to recover from numerous attacks.
• Even more russian media went to colleagues to «rest» indefinitely.

Other:

• The russian radio station «Kommersant FM» was hacked: the anthem of Ukraine and the song «Red Viburnum» were aired [11].
• russian TV channels (russia Channel, First Channel, NTV) were hacked, showing the truth about the war in Ukraine [12].