Tag Archive for: conflict

From Ukraine to the Whole of Europe: Cyber Conflict Reaches a Turning Point | Business


PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar 29, 2023–

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Eastern and Northern Europe on the front lines of the cyber conflict

A new attack geography has taken shape over the last 12 months. At the very beginning of the conflict, the majority of incidents only affected Ukraine (50.4% in the first quarter of 2022 versus 28.6% in the third quarter), but EU countries have seen a sharp increase in conflict-related incidents in the last six months (9.8% versus 46.5% of global attacks).

In the summer of 2022, there were almost as many conflict-related incidents in EU countries as there were in Ukraine (85 versus 86), and in the first quarter of 2023, the overwhelming majority of incidents (80.9%) have been inside the European Union.

Candidates for European integration such as Montenegro and Moldova are being increasingly targeted (0.7% of attacks in the first quarter of 2022 versus 2.7% at the end of 2022) and Poland is under constant harassment, with a record number of 114 incidents related to the conflict over the past year. War hacktivists have specifically targeted the Baltic countries (157 incidents in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Nordic countries (95 incidents in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland). Germany saw 58 incidents in the past year, but other European countries have been relatively spared, such as France (14 attacks), the UK (18 attacks), Italy (14 attacks) and Spain (4 attacks).

“In the third quarter of 2022, Europe was dragged into a high-intensity hybrid cyber-war at a turning point in the conflict, with a massive wave of DDoS attacks, particularly in the Nordic and Baltic countries and Eastern Europe. Cyber is now a crucial weapon in the arsenal of new instruments of war, alongside disinformation, manipulation of public opinion, economic warfare, sabotage and guerrilla tactics. With the lateralisation of the conflict from Ukraine to the rest of Europe, Western Europe should be wary of possible attacks on critical…

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The Russia-Ukraine war is causing some to rethink the role of offensive cyber operations in armed conflict


The impact of Russia’s offensive cyber operations against Ukraine appears to be muted. (Image credit: Juanmonino via Getty)

For some, the horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was also meant to mark the dawn of a new era in modern warfare: one in which degrading your enemy’s capabilities through cyberspace would play an important — perhaps even decisive — role in determining success on the real-world battlefield.

As militaries and societies grew ever more connected to and reliant on the internet to run, so too would the cyberspace domain grow in importance in combat, and nowhere was that supposed to be demonstrated more clearly than in Russia’s war, where their elite and well-resourced military hacking units could cut off Ukraine’s access to power, water and other essential resources, disrupt their communications, wipe out large swaths of private and public sector systems and data, and smooth the way for ground troops to dominate their Ukrainian counterparts.

In reality, the impact of offensive cyber operations appears to have been far more muted.

While the initial invasion did, in fact, come with a flurry of hacking campaigns against many of these targets as Russian troops crossed the border, the cadence of those campaigns have dropped markedly in the months following and have seemingly failed to provide Moscow with any meaningful advantage on the ground.

The experience has some U.S. observers advising that we collectively pump the breaks on the idea — formally endorsed by the U.S. military and others governments — that cyberspace is now a fully fledged domain of war, comparable to land, air, sea and space. That’s one of the chief conclusions reached by Jon Bateman, a former cyber specialist at the Pentagon who has served as an advisor to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense on military and cyber strategy, in a paper released shortly before the new year.

“I think it’s fair for U.S. military and NATO and others to define cyber as an operational domain. That can be a helpful doctrinal concept. I think where it becomes misleading is when military and civilian leaders then assume that cyberspace is as consequential or major as…

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‘Our Conflict With Iran Is Unparalleled’, Say Israel’s Elite Cyber Unit Commanders – Israel News


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DPRK hacking for profit. MedusaLocker warning. C2C market notes. Cyber conflict in the Middle East and in Russia’s war.


Dateline Ashgabat, Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington: Russia restates its security objectives.

Ukraine at D+127: Strikes against civilians along the Black Sea coast. (The CyberWire) Having withdrawn from Snake Island (as a humanitarian gesture, says the Kremlin; because the Ukrainians drove them out, says basically everyone else) Russian forces struck an apartment building along the Black Sea coast with Kh-22 Kitchen missiles, killing at least nineteen noncombatants, Norway recovers from what looks like a deniable Russian state DDoS attack, and NATO plans its rapid cyber response capability.

Russia-Ukraine war: what we know on day 128 of the invasion (the Guardian) At least 19 dead after Russian missile strikes multi-story apartment building in Odesa; Russian forces withdraw from Snake Island in Black Sea

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 128 (Al Jazeera) As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 128th day, we take a look at the main developments.

Russian missiles kill at least 19 in Ukraine’s Odesa region (AP NEWS) Russian missile attacks on residential areas in a coastal town near the Ukrainian port city of Odesa early Friday killed at least 19 people, authorities reported, a day after Russian forces withdrew from a strategic Black Sea island.

Russian forces withdraw from Ukraine’s Snake Island (Washington Post) Russian forces say they have withdrawn from Ukraine’s Snake Island, a highly contested speck of land in the Black Sea they captured shortly after the start of the war — presenting a small but strategic win for Ukraine on Thursday.

Ukraine “big victory” at Snake Island could be a turning point (Newsweek) Russian troops’ ejection from the Black Sea island is of major significance, Ukraine’s former defense minister told Newsweek.

Why Ukraine’s Snake Island victory could be a major blow for Putin (The Telegraph) In Ukrainian hands, the threat to Moscow’s Black Sea fleet will go up, and the risk of an amphibious assault on Odesa will go down

Snake Island: Why Ukraine just won’t let it go (The Telegraph) The rocky Black Sea outcrop where 13 Ukrainian border guards famously refused to surrender has taken on a new significance

Putin’s week: Facing NATO expansion, West’s unity…

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