EU Deploys Cyber Response Unit to Ukraine

The EU is deploying a recently fashioned Cyber Rapid-Reaction Workforce (CRRT) to Ukraine to support the state beat Russian menace actors as troops start out pouring around the border.

The Lithuanian Ministry of National Defence tweeted the news yesterday, revealing that the move came at the request of the Ukrainian authorities.

Lithuania will be foremost the coalition of 6 EU nations around the world – which also incorporates Croatia, Poland, Estonia, Romania and the Netherlands – in buy “to assist Ukrainian establishments to cope with escalating cyber-threats.”

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A CRRT official told the BBC that the group of 8 to 12 specialists would be “composed of different cyber-abilities, these as incident reaction, forensics, vulnerability assessment, to be capable to respond to a variety of eventualities.”

It arrives following a sequence of attacks on Ukrainian establishments traced again to Russia about the earlier few weeks, as it amassed an estimated 190,000 troops on the country’s border.

These commenced with a massive web defacement campaign in which Ukrainian government web sites ended up changed with Russian propaganda messages. Then came a “WhisperGate” damaging malware campaign targeting government, IT and non-revenue businesses throughout Ukraine.

Microsoft warned that the marketing campaign shared traits with the infamous NotPetya malware, which was also designed to seem like financially motivated ransomware.

Past week, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry web page and the networks of state-owned banks had been DDoS-ed by threat actors later on traced by UK and US officers to Russian intelligence (GRU).

“We can see that cyber-actions are an significant element of Russia’s hybrid toolkit,” a CRRT formal informed the BBC.

Ukrainian officials have also warned of Russian disinformation initiatives, dismantling a bot farm functioning 18,000 cellular accounts. These had been made use of to make nameless bomb threats and unfold faux tales alleging mines had been laid in community areas, it claimed.