The Ukrainian government warned allies today that the Russian Kremlin is threatening “massive cyberattacks” against Ukrainian and allied critical infrastructure. This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin increasingly seeks to strengthen his kinetic attacks against Ukraine and is enforcing the first mandatory military mobilization since World War 2.
The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine states that the cyberattacks will be “aimed at enterprises of the energy sector.” Previous experience from attacks against Ukrainian energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be leveraged when launching the new cyber operations, Ukraine believes.
Combining multi-domain attacks in war was something only theorized ten years ago. Now, the Ukrainian government believes the Russian cyberattacks will be combined with missile strikes against electric supply facilities in Ukraine.
The announcement also warns that Russia may launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Ukraine’s closest allies such as Poland and the Baltic states.
Researchers at Mandiant believe that Sandworm, the name of the APT group based out of the Kremlin, are among the most elite hacking groups in the world. They likely could already be inside the perimeter of the Ukrainian’s networks, waiting for the right time to strike.
To date, we have not witnessed a massive scale of cyber operations from Russia against Ukraine, but as Putin becomes more desperate, that all may change.
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