Moscow’s cyberwar on war-torn country, Ukraine mostly failed and Moscow is increasingly targeting Kyiv’s European allies, according to US and French analysts.
French defense company Thales said in a report on Wednesday that Russia was striking Poland, the Nordic and Baltic countries with an arsenal of cyber weapons seeking to sow divisions and promote anti-war messages.
Microsoft said in a threat review earlier this month that Russian actors had launched attacks in at least 17 European countries in the first six weeks of this year. Russia’s assault on Ukraine began on February 24 last year but the military giant has not been able to score a strong victory on the battlefield over its much smaller neighbor.
Thales and Microsoft said Russia’s invasion was accompanied by widespread cyberattacks in Ukraine, but they were repelled. hales’ technical director for cyber defense, Ivan Fontarensky, told AFP that Cyberwarfare didn’t deliver the game-changing blow that Russia hoped for, highlighting the resilience of Ukraine’s defenses.
Both companies said Russia moved its focus to other European countries late last year.
In the third quarter of 2022, Europe was dragged into a high-intensity hybrid cyberwar at a turning point in the conflict.”
Pierre-Yves Jolivet-Thales vice president for cyber solutions.
Jolivet said nations outside Ukraine were suffering a “huge wave” of DDoS attacks when a server is flooded with requests that crash the network.
These raids were increasingly carried out by “hacktivist” groups aligned with the Kremlin rather than official groups, and they sought to sow mess sooner than destroy infrastructure, Thales said. Poland, Latvia, and Sweden were among the most affected countries, the Thales report said.
Microsoft said in its review that raids this year in Europe were largely aimed at government entities for spying objectives. Emphasizing the international reach of Russian actors, the company said 21 percent of attacks outside Ukraine since the start of the war had struck the United States. While attacks outside Ukraine were often low-level harassment, Microsoft said Russia may well choose more damaging cyber tools in the future.
Should Russia suffer more setbacks on the battlefield, Russian actors may seek to expand their targeting of military and humanitarian supply chains by pursuing destructive attacks beyond Ukraine and Poland.”
Microsoft said.
