Microsoft: 42 allied countries of Ukraine targeted by Russian cyber attacks

“Since the beginning of the war, Russia has been successful in 29 percent of cases in its cyber attacks on Ukraine’s allies, stealing data on at least 25 percent of successful interventions in the networks of these entities,” he said. in the report Microsoft President Brad Smith.

“While a coalition of countries has joined forces to defend Ukraine, Russian intelligence agencies have stepped up computer network interceptions and espionage activities against allied governments outside Ukraine,” Mr Smith said.

Nearly two-thirds of cyber espionage targets involved NATO member countries. The United States was the main target and Poland, the main channel of military aid going to Ukraine, was the number 2 target of Russia’s cyber attacks. In the last two months, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Turkey have seen an increase in Russian cyber attacks.

A strange exception is Estonia, where Microsoft said it had not detected any Russian cyber-interference since Russia launched its attack on Ukraine on February 24. Microsoft said that this could be due to Estonia’s decision to transfer all IT data to cloud systems, where it is easier to detect cyber interference. “Great weaknesses in collective defense” continue to exist in several other European governments, Microsoft said, without identifying them.

According to the 28-page report, half of the 128 organizations targeted by Russian cyberattacks are government agencies and 12% are non-governmental agencies, usually research institutes or humanitarian organizations. Other targets of Russian cyber-attacks were telecommunications, energy and defense companies.

Microsoft said Ukraine’s cyber defense “turned out to be stronger” in general than Russia’s capabilities in “waves of devastating cyber attacks against 48 specific Ukrainian agencies and enterprises.” The report noted that Moscow military hackers have been careful not to activate destructive cyber viruses that could damage data stored outside Ukraine, as happened with the 2017 NotPetya computer virus.

“Over the past month, as the Russian military began concentrating its attacks in the Donbas region, the number of devastating cyber attacks has declined,” the report said. “Ukraine Defense: Early Lessons from Cyber ​​War.” The Washington-based Redmond Company has unique knowledge in this area due to the proliferation of its software and its risk detection teams.

Microsoft said Ukraine has also set an example in data protection. Ukraine switched from storing its data on local servers in government buildings a week before the start of the Russian offensive to distributing data to cloud-based (data-based) systems located across data centers across the country. Europe, making them invulnerable to Russian air strikes.

The report also praised Russian misinformation and propaganda aimed at “undermining Western unity and avoiding criticism of Russian military war crimes,” as well as withdrawing people to non-aligned countries.

Using artificial intelligence tools, the Microsoft report estimated that “Russian cyber-influence operations successfully increased the spread of Russian propaganda after the start of the war by 216 percent in Ukraine and 82 percent in the United States.”

top channel