Tag Archive for: war’

Russia has declared hybrid war on Britain

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The reported hacking of Liz Truss’s mobile phone over the summer, suspected to have been conducted by people working on behalf of the Kremlin, should raise alarm bells across Whitehall. Britain is under fierce attack in this new era of hybrid warfare. While we may not be exchanging fire on the battlefield, our critical national infrastructure will be severely undermined and potentially destroyed if we fail to get a grip.

Currently, it is quite clear that our political establishment is not taking the threat seriously enough. The compromised information on Ms Truss’s personal phone, it is reported, may have included sensitive information about the Ukraine war. If true, that would be an extraordinary dereliction of security. Even in the analogue days of the Second World War, it is hard to imagine any government minister making calls or sending cables about sensitive military or diplomatic issues through devices otherwise used for personal matters.

We may indeed have extraordinary technology these days, allowing us to encrypt messages as soon as they are sent, but this amounts to nothing if we continue to see Ukraine as a far-off battle that affects us only on our television screens. At times of war – and this is a war the UK is heavily engaged in – even encrypted communications should be carefully guarded by Whitehall’s security apparatus.

For Putin considers Britain to be his second biggest enemy in Europe, behind Ukraine. He demonstrated his particular hatred for us four years ago, with the nerve-agent attack in Salisbury. His authorities will use any means possible to damage us.

We therefore cannot put anything past him. That includes the severing of the Shefa-2 fibre-optic cables between Scotland, Shetland and the Faroes. These have been played down as accidents – “probably by a fishing vessel” – but how likely is it that an accident would produce two separate cuts on the same day, especially when there was a Russian “research” vessel in the same seaway? We should at the very least investigate the possibility of sabotage.

Indeed, it was just a couple of days after the Shefa-2 cuts that three fibre-optic cables were cut in the Mediterranean off Marseille,…

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Latest news on Russia and the war in Ukraine

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World Bank provides Ukraine with additional $500 million

A Ukrainian helicopter flies in Donetsk region, on September 22, 2022.

Anatolii Stepanov | Afp | Getty Images

The World Bank has distributed another $500 million to Ukraine to help finance the country’s critical spending needs.

The financing, provided by its lending arm, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, had been supported by $500 million in loan guarantees from the United Kingdom that were announced on Sept. 30, the bank said.

In total, the bank said it has authorized $13 billion in emergency financing for Ukraine, of which $11.4 billion has been distributed.

A report published in September by the World Bank, the Ukrainian government and the European Commission estimated reconstruction and recovery costs totaled $349 billion as of June 1. However, the number is expected to keep increasing as the war drags on.

— Natalie Tham

Four ships carrying more than 150,000 metric tons of agricultural products to leave Ukraine

ISTANBUL, TURKIYE – AUGUST 09: An aerial view of “Glory” named empty grain ship as Representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Turkiye and the United Nations (UN) of the Joint Coordination Center (JCC) conduct inspection on vessel in Istanbul, Turkiye on August 09, 2022. The UN, Russia, and Ukraine signed a deal on July 22 to reopen three Ukrainian ports — Odessa, Chernomorsk, and Yuzhny — for grain that has been stuck for months because of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is now in its sixth month. (Photo by Ali Atmaca/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

The organization overseeing the export of grain from Ukraine said it has approved four vessels to leave the besieged country.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, a deal announced in July among Ukraine, Russia, the United Nations and Turkey, said the vessels are carrying 159,662 metric tons of grain and other crops.

Two ships will depart from Ukraine’s Yuzhny-Pivdennyi for China and Italy carrying corn and sunflower meal. One vessel will leave Odesa for Vietnam and is carrying nearly 57,000 metric tons of wheat. The fourth ship will depart from Chornomorsk to Algeria carrying 14,270 metric tons of wheat.

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Ukraine war cuts ransomware as Kremlin co-opts hackers

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The Ukraine war has helped reduce global ransomware attacks by 10pc in the last few months, a British cybersecurity company has said.

Criminal hacking gangs, usually engaged in corporate ransomware activities, are increasingly being co-opted by the Russian military to launch cyberattacks on Ukraine, according to Digital Shadows.

“[The war] is likely to continue to motivate ransomware actors to target government and critical infrastructure entities,” said Riam Kim-McLeod, a threat intelligence analyst at Digital Shadows.

Such attacks partly contributed to a 10pc drop in the number of ransomware threats launched during the three months to September, said the London-based company.

The drop in ransomware may also partly be caused by tit-for-tat digital attacks between rival hacking gangs, Kim-McLeod said.

Researchers said the Lockbit gang, who recently targeted LSE-listed car retailer Pendragon with a $60m (£53.85m) ransom demand, were the target of attacks from their underworld rivals.

“The group is increasingly inviting resentment from competing threat groups and possibly former members,” said Kim-McLeod.

She explained that some cybercriminals’ servers went offline in September after what appeared to be an attack from competitors, saying: “In the world of cyber criminality, it is not uncommon for tensions to flare among rival groups.”

Officials from GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre have said ransomware is one of the biggest cyber threats facing the UK. Figures published by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport this year revealed the average costs to businesses caused by ransomware attacks is around £19,000 per incident.

US-based cyber security company Palo Alto Networks, however, warned that the average ransom payment it saw in the early part of this year was $925,000 (£829,000).

British businesses don’t feature highly on lists of commonly targeted countries, but some research suggests that when targeted, they are likely to pay out. Four fifths of targeted British companies gave in to ransomware criminals’ demands during 2021, according to Israeli cyber security company Proofpoint.

Lockbit is thought to be a Russian or Eastern…

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Defending Ukraine: SecTor session probes a complex cyber war

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It was a quick, but for a packed room of delegates attending a SecTor 2022 session in Toronto, an eye-opening 20-minute tutorial that explored the litany of Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine and what has been done to prevent them since the war broke out on Feb. 23.

The presentation on Wednesday from John Hewie, national security officer with Microsoft Canada, centred on a report issued in late June entitled Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from the Cyber War, that was covered in IT World Canada the day it was released.

In a foreword to it, Brad Smith, president and vice chair at Microsoft, wrote that the invasion “relies in part on a cyber strategy that includes at least three distinct and sometimes coordinated efforts – destructive cyberattacks within Ukraine, network penetration and espionage outside Ukraine, and cyber influence operating targeting people around the world.

“When countries send code into battle, their weapons move at the speed of light. The internet’s global pathways mean that cyber activities erase much of the longstanding protection provided by borders, walls and oceans. And the internet itself, unlike land, sea and the air, is a human creation that relies on a combination of public and private-sector ownership, operation and protection.”

As Hewie pointed out to security professionals attending the conference, the feeling within Microsoft was that the cyber warfare and the attacks that were going on were being vastly underreported, “which is why we invested in the work that I am sharing with you today.”

He said that when the war began, there were cyberattacks on upwards of 200 different systems in the Ukraine: “We initially saw the targeting of government agencies in those early days, as well as the financial sector and IT sector.”

Prior to the invasion, added Hewie, Microsoft security professionals had already established a line of communication with senior officials in government and other sectors, and threat intelligence was shared back and forth.

“And then as the war went on, we saw continued expansion of those attacks in the critical infrastructure space – nuclear, for example – and continuing in the IT sector. When the…

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