How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
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Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#2Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#3How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/11/30/...
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#4TL;DR: Black hats are concentrating more on destruction instead of ransoming data, on both Ukrainian and Russian sides.
Nothing about white hats, grey hats is in the article. Single example of black hat weaponization (Conti), without external reference.
(ChatGPT?)
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#5One 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":
> "Ukrainian resilience was helped, paradoxically, by the primitive nature of many of its industrial-control systems—inherited from Soviet days and not yet upgraded. When, for example, Industroyer hit electrical substations in Kyiv in 2016, engineers were able to reset systems with manual overrides within a few hours."
However, that article also makes an unsubstantiated claim:
> "The sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September, and missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, suggest that the Kremlin’s appetite for risk is growing."
It seems fairly obvious that Russia had little to gain from blowing up its own gas pipelines to Europe, while Britain and the USA viewed that as 'a great opportunity' (Blinken) for replacing Russian pipeline gas with tanker LNG. The Swedish/Danish investigation is apparently ongoing, Germany has classified everything, but the goals of the overall economic battle should be obvious: it's all about who gets access to the European energy market.
Incidentally, the terms 'black, grey, white' are also used to describe propaganda tactics as used in psychological warfare operations:
> "White propaganda: The information is truthful and only moderately biased. The source of the information is cited."
> "Grey propaganda: The information is mostly truthful and contains no information that can be disproven. However, no sources are cited."
> "Black propaganda: Literally “fake news,” the information is false or deceitful and is attributed to sources not responsible for its creation."
https://www.thoughtco.com/psychological-warfare-definition-4...
Almost all of the news we see today, on essentially all important topics, falls into one of the above categories (with social media posts having the most actual 'fake news' content).
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#6One 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"
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?
I don't know. What I do know, is that so far the investigation is not really transparent and I have not seen clear proof of anything, except that it was a really big explosive.
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#7One 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.
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#8One 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…
What do you mean by 'going autistic'?
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#9One 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…
What do you mean by 'going autistic'?
i assume they mean something along the lines of https://ghostintheshell.fandom.com/wiki/Autistic_mode
Re: How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine
#10One 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…
What do you mean by 'going autistic'?
It's a Ghost In The Shell reference... a characteristic of autistic behavior is disconnection from other people, not paying attention and so on, so if you disconnect a power plant's control system from Internet, it's not vulnerable to being attacked over the Internet (which raises other problems, like how do you ramp power production up or down to meet varying demand, etc.).