War in Ukraine, +300% of Russian hacker attacks on NATO countries in one year

War is also fought in cyberspace. A report by Mandiant, Google’s cybersecurity division, highlights how the conflict in Ukraine has transformed cyber warfare globally, fostering the specialization of cyber criminals and the creation of sophisticated threats, also used outside the conflict, such as ransomware

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According to the analysis, since 2022, one year after the Russian invasion, they have increased by 300% cyber attacks of Moscow in NATO countries, with a 250% growth in Ukraine alone. Researchers have identified five phases of the ongoing cyberwar

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In the first, the pro-Moscow factions have studied the goalswithout attracting too much attention. In the second, the first cyber attack operationswho anticipated the third phase of support for military actions on the territory

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From August to September the armies kept theirs conquered positionseven at the IT level, before putting back standing new hacking campaigns. Targeted government, military institutions, critical infrastructure, public services and the media

The report states that the birth of new hacker groupscombined with the so-called “recompiling” virusesi.e. changing only a small part of the threat code so that they are not recognized by security softwaremakes it increasingly difficult to distinguish the perpetrators of an attack and their purposes, if not explicitly stated

Not surprisingly, that of ransomware it’s a growing industry. According to the American analyst firm Chainalysis, in 2022, 40% of all ransomware victims paid the ransom demanded to regain access to locked systems. Another weapon widely used by hackers is the phishing

Among the most popular campaigns in this conflict, bogus emails in the name of starlink service by Elon Musk (who sent satellites and connection routers to Kiev), updates by Microsoft programs and false communications from the Revenue Agency of Ukraine

In the last year, then, Google has almost blocked 2 thousand manipulation activities of information on the subject of war, mainly conveyed by portals in the Russian language. In addition to what has already happened, the report attempts to anticipate the attackers’ next moves

“Moscow will increase the destructive attacks hand in hand with developments on the battlefield – the researchers explain -. They will mainly target Ukraine, but will expand more and more to NATO partners”

Born, hacker attack on several websites: it would be the work of Killnet