Tag Archive for: war’

Ukraine says it has evidence of 109,000 Russian war crimes

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As Ukraine struggles to make progress in its fight against Russia, Kyiv has been compiling evidence of war crimes since the full-scale invasion last year to present to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

The vast majority of the charges being prosecuted were considered crimes against humanity, such as the mass executions of Ukrainians in Bucha in 2022.

Kostin’s figures also include 265 investigations into crimes against the environment, such as the Russian attack on the Ukrainian Nova Kakhovka Dam earlier this year that led to the evacuation of thousands of Ukrainians.

Four cases so far have also been opened into cyber war crime charges.

Kostin said the inclusion of cyber crimes and crimes against the environment for the ICC evidence is a new initiative by Ukraine during this war, stressing that “every crime has victims.”

He also acknowledged the challenge of convicting Russian citizens who may not be in Ukraine or have evaded capture, though he noted that some have been brought to trial.

“The bigger part is Russian war criminals who we charge and who we try in absentia. This is a quite longer process because it requires more procedural actions,” Kostin said. “While all of them receive defense, it’s our position to ensure a fair trial for everyone, including Russian war criminals.”

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Ukraine Tracks a Record Number of Cyber Incidents During War

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Cyberwarfare / Nation-State Attacks
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Fraud Management & Cybercrime

Hackers Steal CCTV Footage to Study Efficacy of Missile Strikes and Drone Attacks

Mathew J. Schwartz (euroinfosec) •
November 16, 2023    

Ukraine Tracks a Record Number of Cyber Incidents During War
The aftermath of a Russian drone attack on a Kyiv energy facility on Oct. 27, 2022 (Image: State Emergency Service of Ukraine)

The tempo of cyberattacks against Ukrainian critical infrastructure has intensified this year – the second year in which Kyiv is fending off a Russian war of conquest.

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In the first 10 month of this year, Ukraine’s national computer emergency response team, CERT-UA, logged 2,054 cyber incidents, compared to 2,194 for the entirety of 2022, said Viktor Zhora, deputy chairman of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection. Three-quarters of the incidents involved civilian infrastructure, Zhora told a cybersecurity conference in Dublin on Thursday.


Hackers’ top goals are to steal information on the disposition of forces, infiltrate organizations that provide critical infrastructure services and steal people’s personal information from organizations across a number of sectors, including insurance and healthcare, said Zhora, who addressed the IRISSCON conference, held by IRISSCERT – short for the Irish Reporting and Information Security Service – via video link.


Since Russia launched an all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, the most dangerous hacking incidents have typically traced to Russia’s GRU military intelligence group, he said. The greatest number of attacks this year appear to have been launched by the Federal Security…

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‘Hacktivists’ join the front lines in Israel-Hamas war

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WASHINGTON and JERUSALEM — When Hamas sprung its deadly assault on Israel in early October, its militants came from land, air and sea.

The Palestinian group launched rockets at populous areas, deployed drones to destroy observation posts, used motorized gliders to float fighters over fortified borders and dispatched speedboats into defended waters. The effects were instantly tangible, with many Israelis killed, abducted or displaced. Infrastructure, including hardened military installations, was damaged.

Less apparent were the virtual campaigns waged before, during and after the opening salvos, though not necessarily by Hamas itself. Hackers supporting its cause hijacked billboards and flooded phones with threatening texts. Grisly videos quickly circulated online, and social media platforms such as X, formerly Twitter, were saturated with front-line footage, some of it fake.

The online efforts serve many purposes, experts told C4ISRNET, including influencing public opinion, softening resistance and hampering the emergency response.

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U.S. Army Sgt. James Hyman collects information from two sensors — on an unmanned aerial system and a robotic dog — in order to conduct cyber operations during an operational readiness assessment in March 2023.

Cyberattacks “are increasing daily, with hundreds of attacks we’ve monitored so far,” said Gil Messing, the chief of staff at Check Point Software Technologies, a cybersecurity company with roots in Tel Aviv. “Our data shows an 18% increase in attacks on Israeli targets since the beginning of the war, and we expect it to continue.”

Hack-tivity

Outside groups with vested interests in the Israel-Hamas fight are dominating the cyber battlefield.

Operations include defacing popular websites and flooding networks with artificial traffic, rendering them unable to function. This tactic is known as a distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attack. Similar moves were seen in the opening days of the Russia-Ukraine war.

“Cyberattacks happened all along, before the [Hamas attack] and after,” said Messing, whose team monitors dozens of third-party groups around the world.

“Hacktivists play a critical role here and actually carry out the vast majority of attacks,” Messing added, using a term for hackers motivated by political or social movements.

Cloudflare, an American company that provides cybersecurity and network services, said media sites were…

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the laws of war must apply in cyberspace

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There are rules in war. International humanitarian law regulates what combatants can and can’t do, with the goal of protecting civilians and limiting suffering.

Most of these laws were developed during the 19th and 20th centuries. But in our own century a new kind of battlefield has emerged: the domain of cyberattacks, digital campaigns and online information operations. All these have played a heightened role in Russia’s war in Ukraine and, increasingly, in the current Israel–Hamas conflict.

There is a persistent myth that cyberspace is a lawless wild west. This could not be further from the truth. There is a clear international consensus that existing laws of war apply online.

In the past month, we have seen three significant developments in this area. Rules for “civilian hackers” have begun to gain traction. A new international humanitarian report has recommended ways forward for governments, tech companies and others. And the International Criminal Court has for the first time signalled that it considers cyber warfare to fall within its jurisdiction.

Rules for hacktivists

On October 4 2023, two advisers to the International Committee of the Red Cross proposed a set of rules for “civilian hackers” during war. The proposals include things like “do not conduct any cyber operation against medical and humanitarian facilities” and “when planning a cyber attack against a military objective, do everything feasible to avoid or minimize the effects your operation may have on civilians”.

The authors were motivated by evidence of online attacks disrupting banks, companies, pharmacies, hospitals, railway networks and civilian government services.

Cyber, digital and information operations – used alongside “real-world” military operations – have risen into the mainstream during Russia’s war in Ukraine. Many operations are carried out by civilian groups not formally connected to the military.



Read more:
Russia is using an onslaught of cyber attacks to undermine Ukraine’s defence capabilities

These manoeuvres are not spectacular. However, as Jeremy Fleming (former head of GCHQ, United Kingdom’s electronic spy…

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