Russia Ukraine Cyberwarfare – All you need to know

Russia is invading Ukraine while the offensive war against Russia and Ukraine is going on there’s one thing that is often forgotten is the war in cyberspace in this article I will be covering everything you should know when it comes to Russia Ukraine Cyberwarfare. For more articles about Cybersecurity check this out

The Russia Ukraine Cyberwarfare had started before the invasion began.
It is still continuing. Firstly anonymous has declared cyber warfare against Russia, at first, some Russian government sites have been experiencing some technical difficulties in the first few weeks Russia faced many DDOSing, especially from the western countries.

As the days went by war in Ukraine was heating up and so were the battles in cyberspace today there is more than 4,00,000 volunteer hacker which is helping Ukraine with the cyber warfare against Russia. As the days went by anonymous hacked Russian organizations including government agencies, oil, gas companies, financial institutions, and many more with terabytes of stolen information leaked onto the internet.

Why have Russian Hackers been so quiet?

Around the world, cybercriminals are crumbling hackers are being round-up but there have been places where hackers are not being arrested at least not at all. More Russians have been sectioned and indicated for hacking than any other country. Being the best place for hackers why haven’t we seen any successful attacks against the Ukraine infrastructure. The reason is that Russia knows that if they do, that would be a nuclear option. Even though Russia has gone to great links to secure their industrial systems, they know that they are not totally secure and hackers around the world could hack them.

But Russia is always known for hacking there are many many examples of Ukraine Russia did in cyberspace (Cyberwarfare): back then we say Russia try to take out the electrical grid system in Ukraine (Sandworm) and lucky they were able to stop it, the next day when US-CERT announced that there had found a SCADA toolkit which is capable of hacking many systems, then after few hours they announced they have found a whole slew of new vulnerabilities in their electric systems. And there are many many examples of Russia trying to hack Ukraine which they did win!. But so far we haven’t seen any big successful attacks from Russia in the Russia Ukraine Cyberwarfare.

We think Russians haven’t played their best hackers in Ukraine yet. Russia is not like other countries just because you repeal them today they’re gonna come back tomorrow and they’ll be back the next day every day they will try a slightly different method to get you until you make one mistake they keep on trying and that’s what they did in 2014.

But the main reason why Russia is not using its main cyber army still remains unclear. But Russia has carried out fewer and less-severe cyber attacks against Ukraine or Russia may be planning something different (cyberwarfare). It is unlikely that everything the Russians may be doing has been made public. Moreover, we should not fully trust the internet gossips they might be holding cyber weapons for use against the western countries mainly the U.S. Across the internet it is claimed that Russian cyber-operations were ineffective miss the bigger picture. In Ukraine, Russia has not yet shut down electricity or Internet connectivity.

That does not mean Russia is not capable of such attacks in fact Russia can show us the picture we have never expected, and Russia did not feel the need for such widespread. Then in June 2017, the hacking group struck again with a powerful new malware called Petya, causing chaos at government ministries, forcing banks to close, jamming telecom networks, and again disrupting Ukraine’s electrical grid. Airports and railways were affected and Chernobyl’s radiation monitoring system went offline.

Ukraine IT army

After the annexation of Crimea (Crimean crisis) in 2014, some hacktivists came together to form a group more likely a cyber community named “Ukrainian Cyber Alliance”, after that, they have been known for Ddosing Russian websites and leaking data in the cyberwarfare

As far as we know that Ukraine is not new to this game of cyber warfare although, there have been some more hacking groups that protect Ukraine just like Ukraine Cyber Alliance. Two days after the invasion Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister for digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov created a cyber army he said “ He formed a community to protect Ukraine and to do attacks on Russia (hacking).

The volunteers are being organized through Telegram channels and other encrypted apps. All over the world hackers have been called and support Ukraine to fight against this critical infrastructure, some 400,000 multinational hackers have volunteered to help counter Russia’s digital attacks.  The bulk of attacks on Russian site seems to come from Ukraine’s IT army.

Anonymous

I Don’t have to tell you what Anonymous is you probably many many times in the news have heard of preventing vote tampering, Operation Didgeridie in which they hacked the Australian government, Operation Tunisia in which they hacked the Tunisian government, YouTube Porn Day, Operation Payback in which they hacked Visa, MasterCard, Amazon, Paypal, Post Finance, and many many other hacks had been done over the past years. They are known as a decentralized hacking group specifically a hacktivist community, they have been known for years for their hacks. On the day of the invasion, February 24 they declared that it “was officially a cyberwar” against Russia and they have calmed most of the hacks done for Russia. They declare “cyberwar” (cyberwarfare) against Russia.

On the first day of the war, Anonymous declared cyber warfare they announced that they hacked Russia’s central bank and would soon release thousands of files and so they did.  As the days went they hacked many Russian organizations such as Russia’s central bank,  TV channels, parliament websites, oil, and gas companies, and financial institutions with terabytes of stolen information leaked onto the internet. Anonymous is one of the leading groups in this ongoing cyber war. At first, we have seen a lot of Dosing claiming it came from anonymous, on official government websites and financial institutions, stirring panic about the public’s ability to access official information as well as their own bank accounts.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Russians were targeting European satellite company Viasat as well as several other satellites across Europe, disrupting Ukrainian military communications temporarily. Ultimately, those early, fairly unsophisticated public attacks were mostly unsuccessful in achieving long-term effects. Websites were quickly brought back online. For now, Russia is responding in a smart way to Ddosing attacks they have put a fence entirely around Russia and not allowed in or out anything, and right now they are trying to block IP addresses that are involved in the DDOS attack it’s something like IP filtering so basically any IP that is inside Russia is only gonna be allowed to access these websites but there are ways people can pass through it.

To be clear anonymous have both sides but as the majority of people support Ukraine it is claimed that anonymous declares war on Russia moreover officially anonymous has announced the war on Russia but as the meaning of anonymous shows us it is still not very clear. Both sides have taken to social media claiming to have conducted successful intrusions into either Russian or Ukrainian targets. Most of the time hackers (the hacktivists) have posted screenshots and documents or leaks to prove their claims.

To be clear anonymous have both sides but as the majority of people support Ukraine it is claimed that anonymous declares war on Russia moreover officially anonymous has announced the war on Russia but as the meaning of anonymous shows us it is still not very clear. Both sides have taken to social media claiming to have conducted successful intrusions into either Russian or Ukrainian targets. Most of the time hackers (the hacktivists) have posted screenshots and documents or leaks to prove their claims.

Russia’s Cyberwarfare Army

Though the offensive cyber capabilities of Russia are well known, its defensive capabilities are not very clear. In the current situation, Russia maintains a low profile in cyberspace, today Russia is being an offensive target for many countries. Russia hosts the world’s largest concentration of cyber criminals. In 2021, approximately three-fourths of ransomware’s exponentially rising revenue went to cyber criminal groups in Russia.

In this cyber world, Chinese hackers are considered kings just because there are many many people from China attacking all over the world so just because China has more people in hacking doesn’t mean that China is the winner of this game however if you look at the most expert hackers they are actually found on Russia! According to govtech Russia covers 4.3% which makes total sense Russian hackers pretend to be from different county thus, leaving the IP of different countries.

What is Russia’s best hacking Group?

Evil Corp, which uses malicious software to steal money, is a global cybercrime network purportedly based out of Moscow, Russia. Technically evil corp is the most dangerous hacking group at the present. Maksim Yakubets who is the CEO and founder of evil corp, it’s said that evil corp has generated over $1,000,000,000 (over 1 billion dollars) from hacking Yakubets and his hacking company is feared all over the world despite the American FBI and the British NCA going after him he lives openly in Russia a millionaire life with his wealth and power. He is on the most wanted list of the FBI, the FBI also announced a 5 million dollar bounty on his head.

In May 2020 Evil corp infiltrated 150 thousand computers worldwide and demanded ransom in exchange for not publishing the private data of the people and big companies. They stole 756GB of data from the New York law firm including dirty secrets of their clients like Lady Gaga, Donald Trump, U2, and many more. And there were many victims of evil corps like Bank of America, California bank and trust, First Federal Savings Bank, Banco Estado, Travelex, Garmin, and many many more.

In leaked videos he is seemed to do donuts and he even does this on public streets police sometimes question him about this but when they realize who he is they always let him go, not only does he not hide his criminal exploits he shows them off to everyone. He owns many luxury cars and big luxury houses in Moscow. However, there are many great offensive hacking groups but there’s something different from all of the hacking group present, they have random people all over the world hacking for them evil corp provides this hacker with information and advice and in exchange for that hackers gives a percentage of their profits to evil corp.