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6 July 2024

Russia’s War Against Ukraine Driving Evolution of Cyber Warfare

Luke Rodeheffer

The war in Ukraine is being fought not only in trenches but increasingly in cyberspace. State-sponsored hackers and hacktivist groups are actively fighting on both sides of the conflict. The lines between the two groups can often blur. Some members of state security agencies are taking advantage of this opportunity to moonlight as members of loosely knit hacktivist networks, and cyber actors are coordinating their activities over the Internet. One example of this phenomenon is Ukraine’s Information Technology (IT) Army. Within three days of Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov called for the creation of a volunteer IT army that would coordinate activities over Telegram against Russian targets (2Plus2, February 29). The IT Army allows any volunteer to join and distributes free tools for conducting cyberattacks over the Internet. The group has had some success performing distributed-denial-of-service attacks against Russian companies and infrastructure. Members have been using tens of thousands of network devices to overwhelm target Internet infrastructure with connection requests, most recently leading to interruptions in service for Mir, Russia’s national payment system (Habr, June 20). The increased use of cyber warfare and collaboration between state entities and hacktivist networks demonstrates a changing landscape in the future of war that will soon be difficult for international security networks to control.

In parallel with the growing ties between state and non-state hackers, cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and more destructive. Russia demonstrated a willingness to engage in destructive cyberattacks as relations between the two countries soured in the 2010s, most infamously targeting the Ukrainian power grid in the winter of 2015 (Epravda.com.ua, January 6, 2016).

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