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How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

economist.com

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Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#21

Post by pydry »

syzarian wrote: post #7
photochemsyn wrote: post #5

One of the more interesting take-home lessons is that low-tech systems are a good passive defense against high-tech cyberattacks (aka, 'going autistic'). From the linked Nov 30 Economist article, "Lessons From Russia's Cyber-War in Ukraine": https://archive.ph/MJP0J > "Ukrainian resilience was helped, paradoxically, by the primitive nature of many of its industrial-control systems—inherited from Soviet days and not y…

Russia has an interest in sowing energy chaos amongst European countries. When dealing with a personalist dictatorship one has to take into account the state of mind and beliefs of one person and such a thing can be erratic and irrational. One should also take into account rogue elements within the regime. Perhaps oligarchs are vying for power by sabotaging other oligarchs who are also vying for power.

>Russia has an interest in sowing energy chaos amongst European countries.

There was as much energy chaos before as there was after.

The presence of a stopped pipeline simply meant that there was an off switch on the energy chaos in Germany that could be flipped - presumably a switch that comes with Russian strings attached.

Somebody was pretty desperate to remove that off switch from Germany's hands.

It's also a switch that, if flipped, would render a multibillion dollar investment in LNG port capacity instantaneously worthless.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#22

Post by syzarian »

pydry wrote: post #21
syzarian wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia has an interest in sowing energy chaos amongst European countries. When dealing with a personalist dictatorship one has to take into account the state of mind and beliefs of one person and such a thing can be erratic and irrational. One should also take into account rogue elements within the regime. Perhaps oligarchs are vying for power by sabotaging other oligarchs who are also vying for power.

>Russia has an interest in sowing energy chaos amongst European countries. There was as much energy chaos before as there was after. The presence of a stopped pipeline simply meant that there was an off switch on the energy chaos in Germany that could be flipped - presumably a switch that comes with Russian strings attached. Somebody was pretty desperate to remove that off switch from Germany's hands. It's also a swi…

I don’t know all the nuances of the deal between Germany and Russia and I suspect neither do you. Is it plausible that a NATO country wanted to blow it up? Yes. It is also plausible that Putin or some faction within his government wanted it blown up. We who are not in the intelligence services don’t have enough information.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#23

Post by hutzlibu »

pydry wrote: post #20
hutzlibu wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It seems fairly obvious that Russia had little to gain from blowing up its own gas pipelines to Europe" The best argument I heard is, that russia has a long term legal binding contract with germany to deliver cheap gas. Not delivering means more economical damage in the shape as absurd as this whole charade sounds. So blowing it up means not being legally responsible for not fulfilling the contract. Did they do it?…

They already had and were using a legal pretext for not delivering the gas.

Yes, that they had to repair something broken. Or was there something else?

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#24

Post by KineticLensman »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #19
KineticLensman wrote: post #12

Compared with some of the pre-war predictions, the visible effects of Russian cyber-campaigns have been somewhat underwhelming. E.g. the Ukrainian power grid remained largely online until the Russians started to launch physical attacks on the infrastructure. Perhaps they've already squandered their best assets (e.g. zero-days) or are keeping them for later / other enemies.

They likely have used their good cyber weapons already and are now less useful than suicide drones and cruise missiles. Knock out a grid with cyber, ok the enemy is prepared and can do a hard reset. Power loss of a few minutes, hours at most. Then that attack vector is gone as cyber defenses are put in place. Blow up a substation, you have bigger problems. Power loss for several hours or days. Russia can still do “lo…

Yes, exactly. The Ukrainian energy grid has already experienced Russian cyber attacks (e.g. in 2015) so will have had time to prepare. Cyber defence is a standard element in energy company training, alongside Carrington events and other 'fun' scenarios.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#25

Post by ridgered4 »

KineticLensman wrote: post #12

Compared with some of the pre-war predictions, the visible effects of Russian cyber-campaigns have been somewhat underwhelming. E.g. the Ukrainian power grid remained largely online until the Russians started to launch physical attacks on the infrastructure. Perhaps they've already squandered their best assets (e.g. zero-days) or are keeping them for later / other enemies.

IIRC Ukraine suffered pretty badly from notpetya as they were the primary target. It is possible that event caused the country to take steps to protect against similar attacks.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#26

Post by pydry »

syzarian wrote: post #22
pydry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Russia has an interest in sowing energy chaos amongst European countries. There was as much energy chaos before as there was after. The presence of a stopped pipeline simply meant that there was an off switch on the energy chaos in Germany that could be flipped - presumably a switch that comes with Russian strings attached. Somebody was pretty desperate to remove that off switch from Germany's hands. It's also a swi…

I don’t know all the nuances of the deal between Germany and Russia and I suspect neither do you. Is it plausible that a NATO country wanted to blow it up? Yes. It is also plausible that Putin or some faction within his government wanted it blown up. We who are not in the intelligence services don’t have enough information.

It is not plausible.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#27

Post by syzarian »

pydry wrote: post #26
syzarian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know all the nuances of the deal between Germany and Russia and I suspect neither do you. Is it plausible that a NATO country wanted to blow it up? Yes. It is also plausible that Putin or some faction within his government wanted it blown up. We who are not in the intelligence services don’t have enough information.

It is not plausible.

You lack in imagination then.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#28

Post by mensetmanusman »

photochemsyn wrote: post #5

One of the more interesting take-home lessons is that low-tech systems are a good passive defense against high-tech cyberattacks (aka, 'going autistic'). From the linked Nov 30 Economist article, "Lessons From Russia's Cyber-War in Ukraine": https://archive.ph/MJP0J > "Ukrainian resilience was helped, paradoxically, by the primitive nature of many of its industrial-control systems—inherited from Soviet days and not y…

“It seems fairly obvious that Russia had little to gain from blowing up its own gas pipelines to Europe, ”

This isn’t a great argument because they have little to gain from the war at all (outside of a few of the elites). Ergo, from a distance it appears Russia is irrational unless you consider that Putin et al. only care about surviving and being extremely wealthy.

In the latter case, there is therefore a possibility that Putin would want to destroy Nord Stream to prevent possible opponents from having an out to help Europe were they to get support to overthrow Putin internally.

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#29

Post by no-dr-onboard »

I worked triage ops for a private bug bounty platform when the war kicked off. We immediately embargoed all of our Russian researchers. Most of them were doing really excellent work for us and were very talented, top contributors to a number of programs. I suppose the look of "paying Russians" was just too unpalatable for our leadership.

Said researchers are active on Twitter and have since turned to openly posting about cybercrime. Sad turn of events all done in the name of "Ukraine good".

Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine

#30

Post by brokenmachine »

no-dr-onboard wrote: post #29

I worked triage ops for a private bug bounty platform when the war kicked off. We immediately embargoed all of our Russian researchers. Most of them were doing really excellent work for us and were very talented, top contributors to a number of programs. I suppose the look of "paying Russians" was just too unpalatable for our leadership. Said researchers are active on Twitter and have since turned to openly posting a…

>all done in the name of "Ukraine good"

It's more "Russia bad" than "Ukraine good", and that seems fair.

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