Tel Aviv: The war in Ukraine enables the world to understand the growing importance of cyber-attacks is modern warfare. Countries begin to get ready for this type of war, but according to Israeli experts, the danger is already changing many known parameters of war.
In a paper written by Dr Eyal Pinko that appeared in the website of the Begin- Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies in Israel, the researcher analyses the mutual cyber-attacks performed by both sides. A former Navy Commander Dr Eyal Pinko is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Centre for Strategic Studies and a researcher and lecturer in intelligence, cyber, national security and maritime security.
Dr Eyal Pinko writes that the day before the outbreak of the war and on its first day, many cyber-attacks were launched on Ukraine’s national infrastructure, government offices, and banking system. Most were Denial of Service (DoS) attacks and website defacement. Ukraine, which had suffered cyber-attacks on its electricity company during the first war in 2014 and the shutdown of electricity in parts of the country for about half a day at that time, was prepared for the current campaign.
“In the first months of the war, Russia repeatedly attacked strategic Ukrainian targets and national infrastructures like banking institutions, the electric company, nuclear facilities, and the transportation infrastructure, but the attacks failed. The Russians launched several strikes, mainly involving the deletion of information from servers and computers. A Russian cyber group called Armageddon targeted civilians and organizations in Ukraine in order to gather intelligence about the state of mind there, as well as other information that would assist in the ground campaign and the shutdown of Ukrainian national infrastructure. Most Russian attacks from the beginning of February 2022 to October 2022 were directed against government institutions, IT infrastructures, and the energy sector.”
The Israeli researcher writes that cyber-attacks were also used in combination with ground force operations or fire strikes. In April 2022, during the ground attack to capture the Zhaporozhiya nuclear power plant, cyber-attacks were conducted against the plant’s corporate networks. The cyber-attacks failed, but the plant was captured.
In another case, the Russians attempted to disrupt the functioning of the Ukrainian Air Force headquarters in the city of Vinnytsia (200 kilometres south of Kiev). They first conducted a cyber-attack on the regional communications network and then fired consecutive sporadic missile strikes on the airfield and headquarters itself.
A similar attack was launched at government, military and national infrastructure installations in the city of Dnipro. The attack began with a DoS strike on the municipality’s computers and website and continued with an attack by 11 cruise missiles on various installations in the city.
Ukraine has also used Cyber in the ongoing war. According to Dr Eyal Pinko, the Ukrainians responded by vandalising Russian government websites in the first days of the war.
“Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy even called on hackers from around the world to join the Ukrainian cyber army in attacking Russian websites and infrastructure as well as to be part of a cyber-based influence campaign. In the latter operation Ukrainians hacked into Russian government websites, sent messages to the cell phones of Russian citizens condemning the war, hacked the website of Russian television and broadcast messages there, and even hacked the website of the Russian Space Agency.”
Pinko writes that the anonymous organisation claims to have penetrated and taken down the website of the Russian state intelligence service, the FSB. In addition to disrupting Russian state functions, the aim is to influence global and Russian public opinion to end the war.
Pinko emphasises that while trying to analyse the use of Cyber in the Ukraine war it must be noted that there is a critical limitation on available information and that the descriptions of cyber-attacks are based on media reports by publications that have their own agendas.
-The writer is an Israel-based freelance journalist. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
