Russia’s “case study” of Ukraine has proven that cyber warfare is fast becoming a bigger threat than anything else the world has faced before. See what’s happening, and what we might face next!
In other news: Russia uses cyber crime to invade Ukraine. Sound too much like science fiction for you? I’ll admit, it doesn’t sound quite right, but it’s true, according to Newsweek. In fact, headlines from this weekend included “PUTIN STARTS AIMING HIS CYBERWEAPONS AGAINST INDIVIDUALS” and others. The following citations are taken from that article on Newsweek.com.
“Since 2014, Russia has used Ukraine as a testing ground for its hybrid warfare doctrine, underscoring what some security experts say is a case study for the new kinds of security threats the U.S. and its Western allies can anticipate from Moscow.”
Imagine a world where countries select smaller, weaker nations as a testing ground for weapons and warfare tactics. Well, you don’t have to imagine, because according to Ukraine government officials, that’s exactly what Russia is doing to them, according to Dmytro Shymkiv, deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine on Administrative, Social and Economic Reform.
Shymkiv commented that Russia is targeting “particular individuals, in particular departments, and they’re constructed based on the social understanding of social media by particular people.” He talked about the resources that Russia had at its disposal. “Russia recruits psychiatrists, scientists, and neurologists, who construct these things to target particular individuals,” Shymkiv said.
All this began after the 2014 Russian attack on Ukraine, and their annex of Crimea. The small region near the Black Sea has been a site for revolution and near-chaos for years. After the Ukraine Revolution, Russia invaded and claimed Crimea as their own, just as it was during the Soviet times. Most UN Members still recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine.
As a result, Ukraine and Russia have been at war for the past 3 years. Over 10,000 Ukrainians have been killed, even though the physical fighting has been limited to a small stretch of land on the border in the Donbas region. The “hybrid warfare” battlefield, or cyber warfare, knows no limits. Consequently, there’s hardly any part of Ukrainian life that hasn’t been affected by Russia’s ongoing hybrid war.
“Russian cyber attacks have hit Ukraine’s power grid, water supply systems, the country’s banking system (shutting down ATMs), its largest international airport, and the electoral process. In December 2016, a cyber attack, which Ukrainian officials attributed to Russia, took down one-fifth of Kiev’s electrical grid. Since 2014, Ukrainian security services have thwarted numerous cyber attacks in which malware from abroad was used in attempts to steal classified information from Ukrainian government networks.”
That’s pretty serious stuff. Is the Internet the battlefield of the future? It seems the “case study” of Ukraine has proven that it is. And soon, that battlefield might extend to other parts of the globe. Europe, Asia, the Americas. Countries can’t function without infrastructure, and total chaos would ensue if grid systems or banks were attacked on a major scale like they have been in Ukraine. Cyber security is the only way to protect ourselves as businesses and as nations from not just cyber crime, but cyber warfare. For more information on how you can keep your personal information and company safe, check this out.