Category: russia

Now this is interesting:

Thousands of pages of secret documents reveal how Vulkan’s engineers have worked for Russian military and intelligence agencies to support hacking operations, train operatives before attacks on national infrastructure, spread disinformation and control sections of the internet.

The company’s work is linked to the federal security service or FSB, the domestic spy agency; the operational and intelligence divisions of the armed forces, known as the GOU and GRU; and the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence organisation.

Lots more at the link.

The documents are in Russian, so it will be a while before we get translations.

EDITED TO ADD (4/1): More information.

The latest meeting that took place between two powerful leaders of the world has given the world the hint that both these leaders intend to rule the fields related to Information Technology, Cyber Security and Artificial Intelligence in the near future.

Yes, a joint statement released after the strategic meeting between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin has divulged the minds of the two powerful leaders to dominate the world with tech in coming years.

Thus, from now on, Technologists and Researchers from both the said Asian nations will explore new innovations in the fields such as AI, IoT, 5G and digital economy on a combined note. They also intend to seek international support by legally instituting certain codes of conduct while exploring the technologies, so they cannot be misused, exploited, or turned against nations under any circumstances.

So, can we consider Russia’s concept paper on the International Information Security Convention and China’s Global Data Security Initiative as platforms conceptualizing the much-needed change?

Well, it’s tough to give a precise answer to this question, as both nations do not have great conduct when it comes to their relationship with the west. And the ongoing Ukraine war with Moscow has strained the relationship of both the nations with the west, furthermore.

Moreover, both these leaders tend to govern their populace with a good intention. However, their intentions go mismatched, when we take into consideration the happenings that are taking place in practical.

With all said, both Putin and Xi have proven their political stance by leading their respective nations for quite some time and that too after being re-elected for second and third terms. That means most or at least some of their populace seem to be happy with their governance and that is giving the 2 leaders assurance to rule the rest of the world.

 

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The Aspen Institute has published a good analysis of the successes, failures, and absences of cyberattacks as part of the current war in Ukraine: “The Cyber Defense Assistance Imperative ­ Lessons from Ukraine.”

Its conclusion:

Cyber defense assistance in Ukraine is working. The Ukrainian government and Ukrainian critical infrastructure organizations have better defended themselves and achieved higher levels of resiliency due to the efforts of CDAC and many others. But this is not the end of the road—the ability to provide cyber defense assistance will be important in the future. As a result, it is timely to assess how to provide organized, effective cyber defense assistance to safeguard the post-war order from potential aggressors.

The conflict in Ukraine is resetting the table across the globe for geopolitics and international security. The US and its allies have an imperative to strengthen the capabilities necessary to deter and respond to aggression that is ever more present in cyberspace. Lessons learned from the ad hoc conduct of cyber defense assistance in Ukraine can be institutionalized and scaled to provide new approaches and tools for preventing and managing cyber conflicts going forward.

I am often asked why where weren’t more successful cyberattacks by Russia against Ukraine. I generally give four reasons: (1) Cyberattacks are more effective in the “grey zone” between peace and war, and there are better alternatives once the shooting and bombing starts. (2) Setting these attacks up takes time, and Putin was secretive about his plans. (3) Putin was concerned about attacks spilling outside the war zone, and affecting other countries. (4) Ukrainian defenses were good, aided by other countries and companies. This paper gives a fifth reasons: they were technically successful, but keeping them out of the news made them operationally unsuccessful.

After two days in this month, the war between Ukraine and Russian will enter its second year after completing one full year. And to make things worse, the Putin led nation is also found launching digital attacks simultaneously on the critical infrastructure of Ukraine for the past six months.

Google, the internet giant of the world, has confirmed the news after releasing a joint report on this note with Mandiant.

Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has witnessed in its study a 250% raise in the percentage of attacks last year, i.e., 2022. And the surge was the highest when compared to the data available for the past two years.

Meaning, GRU (Russian Intelligence) was constantly testing by digitally intercepting the IT infrastructure of Ukraine since 2019. But it raised the intensity bar after launching attacks on the Zelensky led nation from early hours of February 24th 2022.

Mandiant, now a security subsidiary of the Alphabet Inc’s business, said that it observed more destructive cyber-attacks on Ukraine during the first 4-6 months of the past year when compared to the previous 8 years.

Disclosing the list, at least 8 wiper strains were found hitting Ukraine networks since March’22 and two ransomware variants were found targeting the government agencies led by the Volodymyr Zelenskyy led nation.

But all thanks to the Britain’s cyber army that has been training and protecting Ukraine’s cyber forces for the past 6-8 months, no big disruption or blockage to the digital services was observed.

NOTE 1- Although innocent citizens are suffering a lot from the war between Moscow and Kyiv, the leaders of both nations are disinterested in heading for peace talks. As Vladimir Putin is ready to head for the peace talk, only when west withdraws support to Ukraine. And on the other hand, Zelensky doesn’t want to talk with Putin, as his war mindset has claimed many innocent lives, including both army men and civilians.

NOTE2- Britain and France have already expressed their helplessness to help Zelensky as their ammunition resources are depleting. And so, the President of Ukraine is in talks with United States President Joe Biden to regain supply of funds, ammunition and essentials at least till May this year.

 

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For the first time in the history of law, 7 cyber criminals, apparently linked to Russian Intelligence, were slapped with sanctions. Additionally, the real world names, email address, photos and DoBs were also released to the press, to tarnish their image on an international note, thus making them eligible to be slapped with travel bans on all developed nations.

The names of the 7 gang members are Dmitry Pleshevskiy, Ivan Vakhromeyev, Valery Sedletski, Micheal Iskritskiy, Valentin Karyagin, Maksim Mikhailov, and Vitaly Kovalev. The idenitified members are linked to Trickbot malware spreading gang and Conti Ransomware groups, both being funded by Kremlin.

UK’s National Cyber Security Centre(NCSC) along with the US Treasury Department, has issued a warning that any country national, group and business supporting the identified men will be eligible for serious prosecution and harsh consequences, if/when founded guilty.

Cybersecurity Insiders has evidenced that the banned members were caught with evidence of spreading malware, ransomware development, laundering of finances, infiltrating corporate networks with malicious codes and then stealing intelligence.

US District Court of New Jersey also pronounced that Vitaliy Kovalev was also indicted for committing wire frauds and siphoning currency and data from 4 US financial institutions between 2009 and 2010.

So, all you criminals out there in the cyberspace, you better mend your ways or be prepared to face harsh consequences from the law enforcement around the world. As coming days are going to prove tough, to conduct crime and make monetary benefits.

NOTE- Google owned Mandiant security firm was the first to track down the criminals with their activities and based on its tip-off, the governments led by Rishi Sunak and Biden issued sanctions on the 7 member ransomware spreading criminals, linked to Putin led nation.

 

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Russia launched a war on Ukraine, its neighboring country, on February 24th of the year 2022. And still the Zelenskyy led nation hasn’t surrendered to Moscow, all because of the extreme support from the west, regarding arms & ammunition, essentials and, of course, funds.

As the war is fast approaching the one year long milestone, Putin intensified the war by attacking the civilian populace from December last year.

But on constant requests of Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, nations like Germany, the UK, USA and Australia started sending battle tanks to Kyiv, in order to support its retribution against the Russian forces.

Retaliating this move, Kremlin might have thought to take vengeance through cyber-attacks against the west and the first nation to be targeted was Germany.

According to a press release of the Federal Cybersecurity Agency(BSI), all websites related to major airports, companies and government agencies are being hit by DDoS attacks aka denial of service attacks.

BSI predicts that more such digital invasions are expected in coming weeks and expectations are in that the next sector that may observe disruption is finance.

Killnet, the hacking group funded by Kremlin, has taken credit of the attack and announced that all western countries linked to the supply of ammunition such as the Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine will have to face a tough time ahead.

On the other hand, Zelensky has ruled out peace talks with Moscow and insisted that the war may last till March this year and expects France and Macron to support his nation by sending AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles, fighter jets and Challenger 2 Tanks and US manufactured M1A2 Abrams tanks.

 

The post Russia starts cyber attacks on the West with Germany for supporting Ukraine appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

They’re using commercial phones, which go through the Ukrainian telecom network:

“You still have a lot of soldiers bringing cellphones to the frontline who want to talk to their families and they are either being intercepted as they go through a Ukrainian telecommunications provider or intercepted over the air,” said Alperovitch. “That doesn’t pose too much difficulty for the Ukrainian security services.”

[…]

“Security has always been a mess, both in the army and among defence officials,” the source said. “For example, in 2013 they tried to get all the staff at the ministry of defence to replace our iPhones with Russian-made Yoto smartphones.

“But everyone just kept using the iPhone as a second mobile because it was much better. We would just keep the iPhone in the car’s glove compartment for when we got back from work. In the end, the ministry gave up and stopped caring. If the top doesn’t take security very seriously, how can you expect any discipline in the regular army?”

This isn’t a new problem and it isn’t a Russian problem. Here’s a more general article on the problem from 2020.