{"id":49249,"date":"2022-03-14T14:30:17","date_gmt":"2022-03-14T14:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2022\/03\/14\/blue-yellow-and-gray-zone-the-cyber-factor-in-ukraine\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:23:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:23:10","slug":"blue-yellow-and-gray-zone-the-cyber-factor-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/cyber\/2022\/03\/14\/blue-yellow-and-gray-zone-the-cyber-factor-in-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue, yellow and gray zone: The cyber factor in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON<\/u> \u2014 As Russia massed troops along its border with Ukraine over the last few months, it was unclear whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would invade. But if he did, experts warned, Russia would bombard the nation with a series of cyberattacks to sow confusion and weaken its resolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Feb. 24, Putin unveiled his plans. Moscow\u2019s war machine rolled into the Eastern European nation. The combined Russian air, land and sea assault was preceded by waves of cyberattacks, the sort of gray-zone meddling analysts and defense officials had foreseen. Websites were hamstrung. Malware coursed through computers. Communications were hampered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the full-fledged cyberwar some feared has not materialized. There has been no digital devastation of critical infrastructure, no damning disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cApparently, it\u2019s less than we thought would have happened at this point,\u201d said Charles Munns, a retired U.S. Navy vice admiral<\/a> who has advised the Defense and Energy departments. \u201cIt\u2019s more of a 20th century invasion, with tanks and missiles and airplanes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brief cyber history of Ukraine<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Both Russia and Ukraine have a history with cyberattacks \u2014 the former leveraging the domain to wreak havoc, and the latter often finding itself on the receiving end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security, found Russia previously used cyber tools and disinformation to project its force, to varying degrees of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2014, hackers besieged Ukraine\u2019s elections, targeting networks and planting malware. Pro-Russia group CyberBerkut claimed responsibility. In 2015 and 2016, the Ukrainian power grid was compromised, resulting in thousands of outages. And in 2017, perhaps most infamously<\/a>, NotPetya malware incapacitated vital systems the world over, resulting in enormous financial losses. The American, British and Ukrainian governments pointed their fingers at Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt spread across the West … and cost billions of dollars worth of damage, even shut down the English health care system for awhile, even responded back and hit Russian systems,\u201d Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., said of NotPetya during a Feb. 28 Washington Post event. \u201cThose kinds of pieces of malware, once they\u2019re out in the wild, you don\u2019t know where they end up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In late 2020<\/a>, six officers of the GRU, a Russian intelligence agency, were accused of infiltrating and disrupting networks worldwide as a means to advance the Russian agenda. The U.S. and Ukraine were among those targeted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite,\u201d then-Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said when a federal grand jury returned an indictment with charges of conspiracy, computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false registration of a domain name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Russia-Ukraine conflict<\/a> so far has not included that level of damage. Exactly why is not quickly discernible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it goes, overall, into President Putin underestimating how easy it would be to take over Ukraine,\u201d said Craig Albert, the director of intelligence and security studies at Augusta University in Georgia. \u201cI think he might be holding some more cyberattacks in his back pocket. He doesn\u2019t want to unleash them yet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout January and February this year, Ukraine was peppered<\/a> with distributed denial-of-service attacks, a tactic that paralyzes websites with an overwhelming stream of traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Feb. 23 \u2014 just hours before Russia began its physical invasion \u2014 the websites for Ukraine\u2019s defense, foreign affairs and interior ministries, among others, were knocked offline, the government said. Later, malware was discovered on hundreds of machines. Metadata cited by cybersecurity firm ESET suggested the attack may have been in the works for weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe attack involved new data-wiping malware dubbed HermeticWiper \u2014 a destructive malware that can delete or corrupt data on a targeted computer or network,\u201d the CyberPeace Institute in Switzerland wrote in reporting the timeline of cyberattacks on Ukraine. \u201cThe wiper has been detected in Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania, and targets include financial organizations and government contractors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine said it and its cyber partners worked to counter the attacks<\/a> and glean information from them. Prompt updates were promised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost analysts assumed the next war by Russia would be something where we would see actual, physical destruction or death as a result of the cyberattacks, something like [former U.S. Defense Secretary] Panetta\u2019s infamous \u2018cyber Pearl Harbor\u2019 that was warned about,\u201d Albert said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blame game<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Attributing cyberattacks to any one specific actor can be difficult \u2014 but both Ukraine and the U.S. were quick to blame Russia<\/a> for the attacks in recent months, pointing to digital footprints and other evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Russian government has perpetrated cyberattacks against Ukraine,\u201d President Joe Biden said Feb. 24. \u201cWe saw staged political theater in Moscow, outlandish and baseless claims that Ukraine was about to invade and launch a war against Russia, that Ukraine was prepared to use chemical weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Days prior, the White House\u2019s National Security Council publicly linked the attacks to the GRU<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe U.S. has technical information linking Russian GRU to this week\u2019s distributed denial of service attacks in Ukraine,\u201d the council tweeted Feb. 18. \u201cKnown GRU infrastructure has been noted transmitting high volumes of communications to Ukraine-based IP addresses and associated banking-related domains.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moscow has historically denied responsibility. The Russian Embassy in the U.S. in mid-February said Russia \u201chas never conducted and does not conduct any \u2018malicious\u2019 operations in cyberspace<\/a>\u201d and described related remarks made by a U.S. official as \u201cpurely anti-Russian.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US and NATO respond<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Both the U.S. and NATO have responded to the cyberattacks, with the Western alliance working to bolster Ukraine\u2019s cyber defenses and Biden threatening retaliation if attacks bleed into NATO-aligned countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Estonia recently granted Ukraine \u201ccontributing participant\u201d<\/a> status, after rejecting its membership last year. The new relationship, expected to sharpen Ukraine\u2019s cyber skills, was announced March 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCapability and knowledge comes from experience and Ukraine definitely has valuable experience from previous cyber-attacks to provide significant value to the NATO CCDCOE,\u201d Estonia\u2019s minister of defense, Kalle Laanet, said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The director of the center, Col. Jaak Tarien, in a separate statement suggested Ukraine\u2019s expertise would bolster research, exercises and training<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Should the Kremlin ramp up its cyber operations and set its sights farther west, the U.S. is \u201cprepared to respond,\u201d according to Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor months,\u201d the president said Feb. 24<\/a>, \u201cwe\u2019ve been working closely with the private sector to harden our cyber defenses and sharpen our ability to respond to Russian cyberattacks.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the president did not say what the response would be, and U.S. Cyber Command did not respond to requests for comment, the country has plenty to bring to bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould we keep all our capabilities on the table? Should we be prepared to use those capabilities? Absolutely, yes,\u201d Warner said<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t believe, though, that we should pre-commit on those until we see what kind of Russian activities take place here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A study published in 2021 by the International Institute for Strategic Studies ranked the U.S. as the world\u2019s No. 1 cyber superpower, with decades of development and investment across military, industry and academia. The same study put Russia in the second tier, alongside China and others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s strategy, Munns said, historically focused on collecting intelligence, \u201clike many big countries do,\u201d and sowing discord. Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election<\/a> is a prime example. Divisive topics were identified, amplified and exploited, much to the detriment of stateside discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat most people don\u2019t understand is the United States and Russia are in cyber conflict constantly,\u201d Albert said. \u201cIt\u2019s not cyberwar, it\u2019s not warfare that we\u2019ve known.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has said there are no credible cyberthreats bearing down on the U.S. Nonetheless, the agency issued a \u201cShields Up\u201d notice earlier this year,<\/a> indicating every organization, large and small, should be ready to respond to irregularities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf [Putin] views any of these actions as an act of war, if he views them as a provocative, assertive gesture by NATO and the U.S., one way for him to retaliate without risking full-scale kinetic warfare between NATO member states and Russia would be to respond through cyber means,\u201d Albert said. \u201cI assume that\u2019s happening in some scaled version already.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warner and other lawmakers<\/a> have expressed similar worries about spillover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think one pressing concern is that what the Kremlin is directing at Ukraine may not stay in Ukraine, in terms of the cyberattack,\u201d House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said late February. \u201cThe other possibility is that Putin lashes out at the United States and NATO, and in this kind of hybrid warfare, it deploys cyber tools to attack American companies or American infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Schiff, D-Calif., said as of Feb. 24 he hadn\u2019t seen evidence of Russian \u201ccyber action directed at the United States over Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there \u201cis always the risk of escalation,\u201d he cautioned, and it is \u201cvery early in the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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