https://theconversation.com/ukraine-how-cyber-attacks-became-so-important-to-the-conflict-177266
For the past few weeks, Russia has been deploying military forces into strategic positions on Ukraine’s borders. However, there is another, virtual dimension to the escalating conflict: cyber-attacks on Ukrainian government and business websites and services.
Although it is impossible to confirm the Russian state is behind these attacks, commentators have suggested that similar tactics form part of a type of hybrid warfare that Russia has been fine tuning for the past couple of decades.
Cyber-espionage and information warfare have become an intrinsic part of recent conflicts and happen on a regular basis between conflicting powers. However, governments do not usually publicly claim responsibility for this type of activity, since this could put them in a position of declaring war against the targeted country and provoking counterattacks and sanctions from the international community. Therefore, evidence that Russia is definitely behind these attacks is hard to establish.
Cyber-attacks are often attributed to hacker groups with nationalist motivations, who justify their political agendas without explicitly verifying any state backing.
In January, there was a spate of attacks by Belarusian hackers believed to be supporting Russia. They launched a series of malware attacks against Ukrainian computer systems with many government and other websites being defaced with provocative and intimidating messages.
In mid February, there was another round of cyber-attacks, this time targeting the Ukrainian army website, ministerial websites and some of the major banks, including PrivatBank, preventing online payments and use of banking apps.
These latest attacks were mainly distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, where a huge number of small packets of information are sent to websites and servers from multiple sources. This information overload causes the servers and computer systems targeted to slow down or collapse because of the swarm of information requests.
Russian involvement in those cyber-attacks is suspected, but is hard to confirm. The attacks follow the pattern of similar tactics with alleged Russian backing over the past two decades in Ukraine, Estonia and Georgia, including attacks on communications infrastructures and power grids.
The US president and EU officials are now discussing increasing cyberspace defences against such attacks or imposing sanctions, if required.
Despite all of this, Ukrainian officials have refrained from explicitly mentioning the Russian state as being behind these attacks.
A searing look inside the rise of cyberwarfare as the primary way nations now compete with and sabotage one another – The Perfect Weapon
