Russia Plans 'Massive Cyberattacks' On Critical Infrastructure, Ukraine Warns (arstechnica.com) 83
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Ukrainian government on Monday warned that the Kremlin is planning to carry out "massive cyberattacks" targeting power grids and other critical infrastructure in Ukraine and in the territories of its allies. "By the cyberattacks, the enemy will try to increase the effect of missile strikes on electricity supply facilities, primarily in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine," an advisory warned. "The occupying command is convinced that this will slow down the offensive operations of the Ukrainian Defence Forces."
Monday's advisory alluded to two cyberattacks the Russian government carried out -- first in 2015 and then almost exactly one year later -- that deliberately left Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest months of the year. The attacks were seen as a proof-of-concept and test ground of sorts for disrupting Ukraine's power supply. "The experience of cyberattacks on Ukraine's energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be used when conducting operations," the Ukrainian government said on Monday.
It's hard to assess the chances of a successful hacking campaign against Ukraine's power grids. Earlier this year, Ukraine's CERT-UA said it successfully detected a new strain of Industroyer inside the network of a regional Ukrainian energy firm. Industroyer2 reportedly was able to temporarily switch off power to nine electrical substations but was stopped before a major blackout could be triggered. [...] But researchers from Mandiant and elsewhere also note that Sandworm, the name for the Kremlin-backed group behind the power grid hacks, is among the most elite hacking groups in the world. They are known for stealth, persistence, and remaining hidden inside targeted organizations for months or even years before surfacing. Besides an attack on electrical grids, Monday's advisory also warned of other forms of disruptions the country expected Russia to ramp up. "The Kremlin also intends to increase the intensity of DDoS attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine's closest allies, primarily Poland and the Baltic states," the advisory stated. "We don't have any direct knowledge or data to make an assessment on Ukraine's capability to defend its grid, but we do know that CERT-UA stopped the deployment of INDUSTROYER.V2 malware that targeted Ukraine's electric substations earlier this year," Chris Sistrunk, technical manager of Mandiant Industrial Control Systems Consulting, wrote in an email. "Based on that, and what we know about the Ukrainian people's overall resolve, it's increasingly clear that one of the reasons cyberattacks in Ukraine have been dampened is because its defenders are very aggressive and very good at confronting Russian actors."
Monday's advisory alluded to two cyberattacks the Russian government carried out -- first in 2015 and then almost exactly one year later -- that deliberately left Ukrainians without power during one of the coldest months of the year. The attacks were seen as a proof-of-concept and test ground of sorts for disrupting Ukraine's power supply. "The experience of cyberattacks on Ukraine's energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be used when conducting operations," the Ukrainian government said on Monday.
It's hard to assess the chances of a successful hacking campaign against Ukraine's power grids. Earlier this year, Ukraine's CERT-UA said it successfully detected a new strain of Industroyer inside the network of a regional Ukrainian energy firm. Industroyer2 reportedly was able to temporarily switch off power to nine electrical substations but was stopped before a major blackout could be triggered. [...] But researchers from Mandiant and elsewhere also note that Sandworm, the name for the Kremlin-backed group behind the power grid hacks, is among the most elite hacking groups in the world. They are known for stealth, persistence, and remaining hidden inside targeted organizations for months or even years before surfacing. Besides an attack on electrical grids, Monday's advisory also warned of other forms of disruptions the country expected Russia to ramp up. "The Kremlin also intends to increase the intensity of DDoS attacks on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine's closest allies, primarily Poland and the Baltic states," the advisory stated. "We don't have any direct knowledge or data to make an assessment on Ukraine's capability to defend its grid, but we do know that CERT-UA stopped the deployment of INDUSTROYER.V2 malware that targeted Ukraine's electric substations earlier this year," Chris Sistrunk, technical manager of Mandiant Industrial Control Systems Consulting, wrote in an email. "Based on that, and what we know about the Ukrainian people's overall resolve, it's increasingly clear that one of the reasons cyberattacks in Ukraine have been dampened is because its defenders are very aggressive and very good at confronting Russian actors."
Taking a step back: Ukraine publicity working well (Score:5, Interesting)
Whoever in the Ukraine is in charge of keeping the war in the headlines, is doing an amazing job. Normally, whatever crisis the world is having fades into background noise after a few weeks. Ukraine is still all over the headlines, all over the world, and those headlines are almost always pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Compare this to the other side: Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Soldiers, weapons and logistics are essential to warfare. However, public relations - at home and abroad - are also important for any conflict lasting more than a month or two. Anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War in the US, will understand just how important. Kudos to whoever in the Ukraine is working on public relations.
Re:Taking a step back: Ukraine publicity working w (Score:5, Insightful)
You make this sound like a bad thing.
A drowning man keeps screaming as long as he can. Especially when the asshole who threw him overboard is standing there whacking him with an oar.
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My mistake, I misjudged your statement. I thought you were a Rooskie shill.
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Or a Republican talking head who butters up strong men :(
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Name one Republican talking noggin that doesn't.
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Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Sometimes, looks ain't misleading, ya know. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
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If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a goose.
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Whoever in the Ukraine is in charge of keeping the war in the headlines, is doing an amazing job. Normally, whatever crisis the world is having fades into background noise after a few weeks. Ukraine is still all over the headlines, all over the world, and those headlines are almost always pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Compare this to the other side: Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Soldiers, weapons and logistics are essential to warfare. However, public relations - at home and abroad - are also important for any conflict lasting more than a month or two. Anyone old enough to remember the Vietnam War in the US, will understand just how important. Kudos to whoever in the Ukraine is working on public relations.
I think you need to give a lot of credit to Russia for this.
In the Vietnam War (or American War depending where you live) there was a decent amount of nuance. Was the defender the side trying to help South Vietnam resist communist invasion from the North, or the side who would otherwise decisively win a civil war against a government instituted by foreign powers? There's still a decent amount of disagreement in the west on this question.
Meanwhile, Russians are using Nuclear plants as weapons depots, filling
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I see, so you are volunteering to serve on the Russian front. Write soon, tell us how it is going.
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Ukraine is still all over the headlines, all over the world, and those headlines are almost always pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Compare this to the other side: Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Given that Russia is now considered an almost terrorist state by pretty well all the other countries in the world, what outlets are there for a pro-Russian message?
Note that I am not suggesting that there should be a pro-Russian viewpoint in this war, just that Russia now has very few allies with which to carry such a message, and that the media outlets of those allies are not typically viewed by western peoples.
Re:Taking a step back: Ukraine publicity working w (Score:5, Informative)
Zerohedge.
Re:Taking a step back: Ukraine publicity working w (Score:4, Informative)
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Given that Russia is now considered an almost terrorist state by pretty well all the other countries in the world, what outlets are there for a pro-Russian message?
It's not quite that simple. Note that the world happily let Russia attack Chechnya 20 years ago. Then Georgia about 15 years ago. Then Crimea (also Ukraine!!) about 5 years ago. None of these led to any notable international protests or actions.
I think that is the biggest surprise of the current conflict: suddenly, Russia wasn't allowed to just get away with it. Why is Russia considered a rogue state this time? Because Ukraine is the underdog and hero. This is entirely due to Ukraine's public relations ef
Re:Taking a step back: Ukraine publicity working w (Score:5, Informative)
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"The war in Chenchnya was a war against separatism within Russia. It wasn't a war against another state."
Depending on which day of the week it is, this is also the stated Russian view on Ukraine.
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The war in Chechnya was particularly brutal with some really nasty tricks, enough to get the world's attention. The second Chechen war that is, the one that was quite possibly engineered by Putin and FSB that propelled him to power. As in mining the escape routes for fleeing soldiers. But it was "internal", and ostensibly to crack down on "terrorists" so the worlds attention did move on.
Georgia did get the world's attention, and there was a cease fire, which was violated by Russia in less than 24 hours.
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the change in discourse was months before zelensky's moment of glory, and imo part of the strategy. i think this has more to do with world hegemony, some catalyzing circumstances being biden coming to office, scholz replacing merkel and american gas productors being very very pissed with climate friendly us policies. they definitely performed a tour de force long before zelensky's publicity stunts. which are indeed well orchestrated, mind you, but if you ignore the heroic rhetoric and pay attention to the t
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Russia was not provoked, they were the ones doing the provoking.
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yes it very much was, but ofc western media is not telling you about it. you are free to believe their story, that some random dictator suddenly went nuts and set the world in flames. it doesn't make any fucking sense, but if you have the attention span of a zombie or a drone it's convenient, i guess :-)
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Putin was always a dictator, nuts, and wanted to set the world of fire unless it dances to his tune. Or at least has been for a substantial time, during which he imagined threats and provocations everywhere and with anyone who didn't bent over backwards. This has been evident to a lot of people observant who live in Eastern European states that have enjoyed democracy since the fall of the Soviet Union. The
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Russia was not being provoked, but Putin was. Because Putin had the misunderstanding that all the old Soviet states belonged to him. Possibly he feels also that all the old Soviet Bloc nations as well. He wants his empire back. NATO did not persuade those former soviet nations to join them, they asked to join NATO first. They remember how horrendous Russia was under the czars and how horrendous it was under Soviet rulers.
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It's not quite that simple. Note that the world happily let Russia attack Chechnya 20 years ago. Then Georgia about 15 years ago. Then Crimea (also Ukraine!!) about 5 years ago. None of these led to any notable international protests or actions.
All of those events led to sanctions of some type or another.
They were also ambiguous. Terrorists attacked Russia from Chechnya 20 years ago, triggering that war. The Georgia was was a peace keeping action, Russia didn't annex territory. Many people in Crimea wanted to join Russia.
In the Ukraine war, it is a clear attempt to annex a country that doesn't want to be annexed. Who is right and who is wrong is very unambiguous (unless you believe that an "older brother" country has the right to beat down a "youn
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Zelenskyy standing up with his people and declaring "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition" will be (if it isn't already) one of the defining moments of the early 21st century. I'm sure he is well aware this didn't happen because Ukraine is beloved by the world, even if it should be for feeding half of the world. It happened because they're NOT RUSSIA, and are willing to take on the task. So long as they maintain the moral high ground, they'll retain Western support because the fact from the West is that i
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Ukraine is still all over the headlines, all over the world, and those headlines are almost always pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia. Compare this to the other side: Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Given that Russia is now considered an almost terrorist state by pretty well all the other countries in the world, what outlets are there for a pro-Russian message?
Note that I am not suggesting that there should be a pro-Russian viewpoint in this war, just that Russia now has very few allies with which to carry such a message, and that the media outlets of those allies are not typically viewed by western peoples.
Russian media, which is directly state controlled at this point or under a sincere threat of going to jail if they so much as call it a war. So there really is no anti-war voice there because it's not allowed. TASS has an English language version, but keep in mind the framework it's operating under, there's spin, and then there's refined copium, which is more what that is. It's still interesting to keep tabs on what crazy juice they're trying to feed their people.
You could read about the dumbass Ukraine
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There are a few high-profile westerners eager to carry water for Putin:
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Even Russia isn't giving a good pro-Russia viewpoint, because all the news out of there is so obviously contrived. No one with half a brain believes that Russia is protecting Ukraine from itself or that it's rooting out neo-nazis.
Re: "almost" terrorist state Russia. (Score:1)
Given that Russia is now considered an almost terrorist state by pretty well all the other countries in the world,
IT **IS** A TERRORIST STATE, SINCE ever.
That is all.
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Compare this to the other side: Russia mostly manages to make itself look foolish or desperate.
Russia doesn't have Western media at its disposal (unlike Ukraine). Whatever Ukraine says is immediately reported as fact. The western Media is on the side of Ukraine in this information warfare.
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Russia doesn't have Western media at its disposal
What you say is true but the way you put it is strange. Russia "disposed" of western media because when the western media were in Russia they reported on the things going on there and that wasn't convenient. Russia has even frightened away their own independent media. That leaves behind things like RT which most people aren't interested in because they are obviously manipulated towards Russian state interests and into spreading misinformation about everything else. Every minute of your time spent watching t
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The western Media is on the side of Ukraine
As all thinking beings should be.
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media should be unbiased
Russians shouldn't be killing and terrorizing so many innocent people. Then it won't appear as if the media is biased.
There are still plenty of Russian appeasers in the regular media. You can still get "both sides'" view.
You're just crying because one side is more popular... As it should be
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Meanwhile ruzzia is running sham 'referendums', here is a video [youtube.com], you can see how wonderful ruzzian style of democracy in action. A group of people with some occupying forces with machine guns are going door to door asking for the people to 'vote'. Did you know that the support for the occupying forces is over 96.97%? Did you have any doubt that a "vote" backed by a machine gun can be anything but 96.97%? :) I am surprised it is not 150%.
https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
RIA said the initial counts from voting stations on Russian soil showed huge majorities in favour of joining Russia. They ranged from 96.97% for Kherson region, based on 14% of votes counted, to 98.19% in Zaporizhzhia, based on 18% of the count. ....
The votes mirrored a referendum in Crimea after Russia's seizure of the region from Ukraine in 2014, when Crimea's leaders declared a 97% vote to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
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February 2022: Russia second best army in world!
July 2022: Russia second best army in Ukraine!
November 2022: Russia second best army in Russia!
how do the turds get access? (Score:1)
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It ain't that hard to rent a server with a non-Russian, non-Chinese provider. Or if cash is an issue, use some cloud computing.
Getting an IP that isn't (or is) associated with a certain country is really no big deal these days.
Re: how do the turds get access? (Score:1)
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There's ways around this. Domain fronting [wikipedia.org] is only one of them (and the one I mention because it's not really working that well anymore anyway).
Sadly, these attacks can and do last.
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It takes time for attacks to be detected, and there's lots of ways to get new IP addresses in other countries - lots.
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Indeed. And if it is hard to get it legitimately, just hack some.
Personally, I have 4 virtual servers with static IPs abroad, simply because they were a lot cheaper. In the age of credit-cards, this is really no problem at all.
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How do russian hackers even get access? I doubt any of the infrastructure even allows ru, china, unknown, etc ips. So whats left proxy ips from US, EU and Ukraine? I cant imagine those lasting long. The authorities will be quick to stamp those out.
Or am I completely missing something?
The proxy IPs are easy, the tough part is getting into the parts of the network that matter. The colonial pipeline attack never actually affected pump operations, it just prevented them from billing [wikipedia.org]. I doubt a Ukrainian utility would do the same during a war, but their operations might not be as isolated from the Internet. There might be a VPN that gives certain groups remote access to critical systems (and thus the Russians if they exploit those groups) or a misconfiguration that gives an attacker into the
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The proxy IPs are easy, the tough part is getting into the parts of the network that matter. The colonial pipeline attack never actually affected pump operations, it just prevented them from billing [wikipedia.org].
Yes. But that was quite enough. And if you look how the attackers got in (old, forgotten remote access with bad credentials), that level of incompetence in the defenders is sheer madness.
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How do russian hackers even get access?
Simple: Really, really bad IT security at the targets. As to proxying via people you hack first, that is a very well established approach to things. What you are missing is that the "authorities" are a) incompetent and b) do not care. Ever wondered why a major petrol pipeline operator in the US did not even get basic IT security right?
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia NATO defends, no
In Soviet Russia USA? No.
In Soviet Russia Cheyna helps ... YOU!
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Someone is beating you over the head with a shovel. Do you turn to your friends and ask for a hamburger?
Ukraine: Russia go home and stop the war.
Putin: Is not war, is potato.
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Sounds like someone is trying to talk the US into giving them more money and weapons.
And why shouldn't the US do that? The States has a history of spending LOTS of money and weapons to 'secure' the Middle East because of its oil. Wouldn't spending enough resources to prevent the occupation of a large part of Europe by Russia be of similar strategic value? Notwithstanding the nuclear threat, of course...
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Sounds like someone is trying to talk the US into giving them more money and weapons.
And why shouldn't the US do that? The States has a history of spending LOTS of money and weapons to 'secure' the Middle East because of its oil. Wouldn't spending enough resources to prevent the occupation of a large part of Europe by Russia be of similar strategic value? Notwithstanding the nuclear threat, of course...
Well, I agree with supporting Ukraine, but we could end this thing so much more cheaply and quickly. Just take some of the money we're sending Ukraine, say a billion or two dollars, and publicly make it known that we'll give it (and US citizenship, if desired) to any individual or group that delivers Putin to Ukrainian or NATO law enforcement to face a war crimes trial. He'd be "disappeared" by his own Kremlin guards in 5 minutes.
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Well, I agree with supporting Ukraine, but we could end this thing so much more cheaply and quickly. Just take some of the money we're sending Ukraine, say a billion or two dollars, and publicly make it known that we'll give it (and US citizenship, if desired) to any individual or group that delivers Putin to Ukrainian or NATO law enforcement to face a war crimes trial. He'd be "disappeared" by his own Kremlin guards in 5 minutes.
My initial reaction was "what a brilliant idea". Then I started thinking about the precedent it would set. I'm not sure we want to take any steps toward normalizing that particular brand of statecraft.
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Sounds like someone is trying to talk the US into giving them more money and weapons.
If Russia would stop the war andremove all its troops from all of Ukraine (Crimea included), this wouldn't be an issue, would it?
Don't like your army being destroyed by weapons your opponent is receiving to defend itself? Get out of their country and stop attacking.
Russia posturing? (Score:2)
I believe they would have already shot their big "hack cannons" when they were losing in Kyiv. I doubt they have many tricks left.
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Against Ukraine? No. Against the rest of the world? They very much have a massive number of targets left, because most critical infrastructure is "secured" abysmally badly as that would cost money and reduce CEO bonuses. Yes, I have seen examples first-hand.
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They've been trying to hack the US since, like forever. Their low-hanging fruit is 3rd world countries, but they don't have enough to affect the conflict much.
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It is not about "hacking the US". It is about creating specific effects and hacking is one of the tools in their toolbox. State-actors are actually much less of a threat to most enterprises, because they typically attack for political reasons. For example, if Putin could switch off the whole power-grid in the US now, he would not do it. There is no political profit in doing that. And there is plenty of low-hanging fruit in the US left. Just read a few reports on hacks that were actually made public and how
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> And there is plenty of low-hanging fruit in the US left.
Which they've been plinking at for decades. Why would they suddenly have significantly more low-hanging-fruit tricks up their sleeve?
K.I.S.S. (Score:2)
I think, without going into detail that: "F**k You" is pretty much the entire 'against' debate argument for attacking critical infrastructure. Seems like it has aged well too.
Imo Russia has long had such plans in reserve (Score:2)
The only change being that more rubles get dedicated to keeping them up to date, and more people are checking in for a heads-up as to where things stand.
America likely has similar hooks into Ukraine's cyberspace, but mostly just to see how secure it is. Lol, "mostly".
Ukraine was NOT innocent in cyberattacks before. (Score:2)
If you look at these Russian hacking groups, you'll see there are many Ukrainians they had to cut loose -- often because of an inability to pay them. So in this particular field, it's almost like they're playing an intra-squad game. They may simply not be willing to go after each other that hard. Or maybe defense is easier/cheaper/better ROI than attacking, when they know the other side can fire back just as hard.