Cyberwar: Two days before Christmas, 600,000 Ukrainians were hit by a power outage brought on by an unprecedented cyberattack. They blamed Russia — for good reason. Where is its seriousness about ending sanctions?
 |
The silent, surprise "Black Energy" malware attack left Ukrainians freezing for hours in the dead of winter, destroying the hard drives of three power substations. It could only be called an act of warfare, given the damage that it did.
Experts have called the act "new territory," "troubling escalation" and a "cyberattack milestone" with "global implications." After all, it was the first power outage triggered by malware coming from a cyberattack. Many worry that if such attacks can be done now, they can be repeated elsewhere.
 |
That raises questions about what the likely culprit's — Russia's — real intentions are.
Ukraine's security services have said that the Ivano-Frankivsk attack is quite directly the work of Russia or one of its state cyber collectives, unsurprisingly. Russia has attacked Ukraine militarily since 2014 with secret armies and a Moscow-fueled insurgency in the east that has killed 6,000 and cost Ukraine some territory, including Crimea.
Cyber-expert and former FBI top official Steve Martinez — managing director of Stroz Friedberg, which combats cyberattacks — told IBD there are four types of cyberattacks: freelance thieves looking to scam; punks in basements looking for fun; activists such as Wikileaks with political agendas; and, worst, state-linked actors who aim to destroy infrastructure to exert power.
This outage can only be called Category 4.Read the rest of the story HERE.
If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.
No comments:
Post a Comment