The general of the United States of America and the director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Paul Nakason, admitted in an interview to "Sky News" that their cyber units are active in Ukraine, and that they have been conducting operations, so-called "hunts" for some time to protect against potential Russian cyber attacks. attacks on American targets.
As he said, "every day" there is a risk of Russian attacks on the information infrastructure of the US and its allies, which is the reason for their preventive activities.
Operations include offensive and defensive activities, as well as information tasks. The general revealed that one unit for "hunting" was in Ukraine immediately before the start of the invasion. They came at the invitation of Kiev, and stayed there for 90 days, but they returned on the eve of February 24.
Nakason believes that Russia is trying to spread lies with its cyber activities, and points to an example from 2020 when several different "troll farms" were registered in Africa that had malicious activities. Troll farms are organizations that gather people to post aggressive and provocative comments, usually through fake profiles on social networks, with the aim of influencing public opinion.
It was expected that Russia would launch a major cyber attack on Ukraine's critical infrastructure right at the beginning of the invasion - such as the power grid, mobile telephony, or cutting off President Zelensky's office from the rest of the world. It never came to this. According to the reports of "Microsoft" and the writing of the "New York Times", the Kremlin opted for tactics of smaller aggressive attacks - such as infecting computers in important institutions with viruses, espionage and spreading disinformation.
Thus, on the first of March, Russian hackers attacked several Kyiv media by inserting malicious programs into their computers. Their goals were to steal and delete data from editorial computers. A few days later, the official website of a city near Kiev was attacked.
The BBC previously wrote that there was a fear that Russia would respond to the imposed sanctions against the West with hacking attacks. That has not happened so far. There are only so-called hacktivists who, out of revolt against the Russian invasion, launch independent cyber attacks against Russian targets.
It turns out that, compared to the Russian hacking units in which investments have been made for years, Ukrainian capacities are not unenviable. Namely, the Ukrainians have significant support from the West in this field as well.
Be that as it may, mutual cyber "pecking" can lead to an escalation of the conflict, considering that one of the advantages/disadvantages of cyber, depending on which angle it is viewed from, is precisely the effect of rapid spillover to other spheres.
FM/ Sky News/ BBC/ New York Times
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