Russia “Pre-positioning” Cyber-Attacks for Potential Invasion

The UK and US governments immediately attributed DDoS attacks on Ukrainian organizations previous 7 days to Russian intelligence.

A National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) missive on Friday said it is “almost certain” that the attacks which took spot on February 15 and 16 ended up the get the job done of the Russian Principal Intelligence Directorate (GRU).

“The attack showed a ongoing disregard for Ukrainian sovereignty. This exercise is nonetheless yet another case in point of Russia’s aggressive functions towards Ukraine,” a International Office spokesperson reported.

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“This disruptive conduct is unacceptable. Russia should halt this exercise and respect Ukrainian sovereignty. We are steadfast in our assistance for Ukraine in the encounter of Russian aggression.”

US deputy countrywide security advisor for cyber, Anne Neuberger, echoed these sentiments in a push convention the same working day.

However, she went further more, warning that the attacks could be just the begin of a more substantial campaign intended to coincide with a armed service invasion of Ukraine.

“The US federal government believes that Russian cyber-actors likely have specific the Ukrainian government, including military services and critical infrastructure networks, to accumulate intelligence and pre-posture to conduct disruptive cyber activities,” she stated. “These disruptive cyber-functions could be leveraged if Russia usually takes further more military motion versus Ukraine.”

Neuberger added that Russia “likes to transfer in the shadows” and counts on the actuality that western governments typically choose their time around attribution so that it can continue the malicious online exercise, like pre-positioning, with impunity.

This is possible to be the scenario why the conclusion was taken to title-and-shame the Kremlin so swiftly following the DDoS attacks past week.

The US governing administration has been preparing for a doable attack on its own critical infrastructure for numerous months by conducting “extensive outreach” with critical infrastructure (CNI) vendors, said Neuberger. Governing administration businesses have long gone to “unprecedented lengths” to share information and facts with the personal sector, including technical indicators of prior Russian attacks on Ukrainian CNI.

“We urge our private sector partners to exercise incident reaction plans and set in area the cybersecurity defenses like encryption and multi-factor authentication (MFA) that make cyber-attacks more challenging for even refined cyber-actors,” she explained.