A group of hackers aligned with the Russian government has carried out hundreds of cyberattacks against Ukraine since Moscow invaded the neighboring country, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday.
The tech giant stressed that as part of its “hybrid” warfare tactic, Russia often combines cyberattacks with military actions on the battlefield.
Working with Ukrainian cybersecurity experts and private companies to counter these attacks, Microsoft said, “Starting just before the invasion, we saw at least six actors from nation-states aligned with Russia launch more than 237 operations against Ukraine.”
The American company claimed that this cyber warfare included “continuing and devastating attacks that threaten the well-being of civilians.”
The report states that in the first week of the invasion, Russian hackers attacked a major Ukrainian broadcaster “on the same day that the Russian military announced its intention to destroy “disinformation” targets in Ukraine and launched a missile attack on a television tower in Kiev.
The US company stressed that the purpose of these coordinated attacks was “to disrupt or disrupt Ukraine’s military and government functions and undermine the public’s trust in the same institutions.”
In addition, Microsoft said it has detected nearly 40 devastating cyberattacks targeting hundreds of systems, with one-third targeting Ukrainian government entities at all levels, from the national to the local level, and the other 40 percent targeting the country’s critical infrastructure.
“These actors tend to replace their malware with every action to avoid detection,” the report notes, noting that hackers began preparing their campaigns in March 2021, almost a year before Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
source: Noticias
