The Next Russian Cyberattacks Will Be More Damaging
The British Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged £15m to strengthen cybersecurity defences at an “intelligence partners” summit with the leaders of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, who make up the "Five Eyes" security alliance with the UK and US.
Speaking at the National Cyber Security Centre in London last month, the Prime Minister said: "Russia is using cyber... as part of a wider effort to attack and undermine the international system."
"Its interference over the past year has included attacks on the public sector, media, telecommunications, and energy sectors."
On March 15, the Department of Homeland Security together with the FBI announced that Russian government hackers infiltrated critical infrastructures in the US, including “energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.”
According to the DHS-FBI report, malicious Russian activities have been ongoing since at least March 2016. The Russian malware, which has been sitting in the control systems of various US utilities, allows the Russians to shut off power or sabotage the energy grids. And they have done it before:
The same malware that took down Ukraine’s electrical grid in 2015 and 2016 has been detected in US utilities. The potential damage of a nationwide black out, let’s say on Election Day, would be significant, to say the least. And while Russian trolls and bots have captured public attention, they are already yesterday’s game.
The disinformation tools used by Moscow against the West are still fairly basic: They rely on exploiting human gullibility, vulnerabilities in the social media ecosystem, and lack of awareness among the public, the media, and policymakers.
In the very near term, however, technological advancements in artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities will open opportunities for malicious actors to undermine democracies more covertly and effectively than what we have seen so far.
Increasingly sophisticated cyber-tools, tested primarily in Ukraine, have already infected Western systems, as evidenced by the DHS-FBI report. An all-out attack on Western critical infrastructure seems inevitable.
Lessons from Ukraine
In the West, Russia’s cyber-attacks so far have been at the service of its disinformation operations: stolen data used to embarrass individuals, spin a narrative, discredit democratic institutions and values, and sow social discord.
This was the pattern Russian operators followed in the United States, France, and Germany during the countries’ 2016–17 elections. Hacking email accounts of individuals or campaigns, leaking that stolen information using a proxy (primarily WikiLeaks), and then deploying an army of disinformation agents (bots, trolls, state controlled media) to disseminate and amplify a politically damaging narrative.
Such cyber-enabled interference falls below the threshold of critical infrastructure attacks of significant consequence that could result in “loss of life, significant destruction of property, or significant impact on [national security interests].”
The nightmare of cyber-attacks crippling critical infrastructure systems still has the sound of science fiction to most Americans. But in Ukraine, this nightmare is real.
As the laboratory for Russian activities, Ukraine has seen a significant uptick in attacks on its critical infrastructure systems since the 2013–14 Maidan revolution.
A barrage of malware, denial of service attacks, and phishing campaigns bombard Ukraine’s critical infrastructure environments on a daily basis.
In December 2015, a well-planned and sophisticated attack on Ukraine’s electrical grid targeted power distribution centers and left 230,000 residents without power the day before Christmas. The attackers were able to override operators’ password access to the system and also disable backup generators.
You Might Also Read:
