Microsoft: Russian Cyberattacks Increase Against Ukraine, Supporters

[Raevenlord]

Even as the Russo-Ukrainian war continues grassing with no end in sight, Microsoft has warned that Russia is increasing its cyberwarfare-based attacks against Ukraine and the countries that have vowed to support it against external aggressions. The Redmond-based company says that Russia is increasing the rate and complexity of its attacks not only on government agencies, but also on supporting infrastructures such as think thanks, telecommunications, energy, and defense companies. Even humanitarian groups, which have been tirelessly providing Ukraine's population with the resources needed for bare survival, have been in the sights of the former Soviet Union.

All in all, Microsoft has registered attacks 102 organizations from as many as 42 countries. Microsoft's numbers place around 60% of the attacks against NATO members - with the US being one of the favorite targets. Poland too has been particularly affected, being one of the distribution centers for provisions - and a hub for refugees to leave the embattled country. Despite that, Microsoft says only around 29% of the attacks have been successful - likely a testament to both Russia's technological difficulties and the overall reinforced networks and cybersecurity defenses of NATO countries. Even so, resources spent fighting Russia's attacks have an opportunity cost - they can't be spent elsewhere.





As part of Microsoft's strategic retreat from the Russian markets, the company has announced it is laying off hundreds of workers in the Russian state, while also recently blocking downloads of its popular Windows OS. As Russia's technology is generally far behind that of western countries, these moves by Redmond are sure to make things more difficult for Russian state actors involved in the "special military operation" - invasion - of Ukraine, started in February 24th of this year.



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[Ferrum Master]

Rolf...

Russian Cyberwarfare was strong even before the war. Freaking daisies at Redmond. Or here might be the case of the stupid artists again, Estonia is not marked.

 

[RH92]

Kuddos to them , every respectable army has Cyberwarfare units ! The United States do aswell , so why is Microsoft not breefing us about the behaviors of the United States Cyber Command .... oh we all know why , they would face lifetime jail penalties if they did so ( ask Snowden and Assange ) but hey otherwise the United States represent the free democratic world .

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Kuddos to them , every respectable army has Cyberwarfare units ! The United States do aswell , so why is Microsoft not breefing us about the behaviors of the United States Cyber Command .... oh we all know why , they would face lifetime jail penalties if they did so ( ask Snowden and Assange ) but hey otherwise the United States represent the free democratic world .

How do you figure that? "Blowit-in" and "Assangle's" motives for releasing the stuff they did were probably far from altruistic and amounted to being downright vindictive & retarded. There are certainly better ways to whistle blow instead of just carelessly releasing everything and anything online to the public; especially if there's a chance that it could get people killed.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Kuddos to them , every respectable army has Cyberwarfare units ! The United States do aswell , so why is Microsoft not breefing us about the behaviors of the United States Cyber Command .... oh we all know why , they would face lifetime jail penalties if they did so ( ask Snowden and Assange ) but hey otherwise the United States represent the free democratic world .

They could at least report about PCR doing, or even the North Korean.

There are certainly better ways to whistle blow instead

There are certainly better ways to detain a person, not hooking to hooker, who afterwards sues you.

 

[Chomiq]

What's the point of even enabling comments on this one?

 

[Daven]

What's the point of even enabling comments on this one?

I concur. The above comments so far are complete nonsense and barely readable.

 

[Tomorrow]

Rolf...

Russian Cyberwarfare was strong even before the war. Freaking daisies at Redmond. Or here might be the case of the stupid artists again, Estonia is not marked.

I live in Estonia. It's true that there has not been any big attacks against us from Russia since 24 February when the war in Ukraine started. But there have been some very generic DDoS attacks against some government websites. While i would not say that we are unpenetrable we do have more experience fighting against this kind of thing. Estonia was one of the worst hit in 2007 riots when Russian backed nationalists rebelled in Tallinn and caused widespread unrest. Russia followed with widespread cyber attacks against Estonia. Since then Estonia has shored up it's cyber defenses to make sure these attacks would not cripple critical infrastructure.
More on this subject here:

Bronze Night - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

2007 cyberattacks on Estonia - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

Why doesn't the west retaliate with in kind? I'm not advocating either way, but I'm curious as to why they don't.

How do you figure that? "Blowit-in" and "Assangle's" motives for releasing the stuff they did were probably far from altruistic and amounted to being downright vindictive & retarded. There are certainly better ways to whistle blow instead of just carelessly releasing everything and anything online to the public; especially if there's a chance that it could get people killed.

The government putting people in those situations in which released information could get them killed is way more responsible for those hypothetical deaths than the whistle-blower. Regardless, the whistle blowers motivations are completely irrelevant and are just focused upon to divert attention. Manning releasing that info was for the better of everyone, especially that video of those helicopter gunships wrongfully executing unarmed civilians and a journalist, and it's essential to know the government had a completely unwarranted and arguably illegal campaign to spy on Americans with absolutely no justification.

There's no such thing as "benevolent authoritarianism", and the state should never be carrying out espionage and surveillance against its own people and then claiming it's for their own good... That type of tyrannical paternalism should frighten us all.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Why doesn't the west retaliate with in kind? I'm not advocating either way, but I'm curious as to why they don't.

I would think it's pretty much a certainty they are but they are hardly going to advertise the fact, it kind of sends out a warning.

 

[ZoneDymo]

cant we just....ya know...lock off Russia from the rest of the world?

 

[Vayra86]

Why doesn't the west retaliate with in kind? I'm not advocating either way, but I'm curious as to why they don't.

Who says we aren't? The cyber war has been going on far longer than 'since Feb 24'...

 

[ThrashZone]

I would think it's pretty much a certainty they are but they are hardly going to advertise the fact, it kind of sends out a warning.

Hi,
US has never been to shy to telegraph an action or direction
This admin is completely predictable no matter what is said to media.

Defense only.

 

[SentinelAeon]

To be honest i am kind of disappointed in the response from western "geeks". I know there is tons of people who are good at this kind of things and in the past they always seemed to unite around some goal, like gamergate (i have no opinion about that, just gave it as an example). I remember Anonymous attacking various targets that they deemed evil (debatable often, true).
In the case of Russia attacking Ukraine i would think that the whole geek community would get together and strike back and do some real damage. But i dont see any real response. Maybe there was and i missed it. All i know is that Russian patriots right now are doing all they can to do harm to Ukraine and west. While we sit back or worse, try to justify the attack or plain support Russia. I know many people dont really like USA and Nato and i understand them, i have often spoken that the west is far from perfect. But the second the tanks went to Kiev i would think we would get together and respond in kind. I guess in the end, all the technology and economy supremacy that west has doesn't offset the fact that we fight amongst ourselves while the countries that deem us enemies unite. A family members might fight amongst themselves, but when someone wants them harm, the whole family gets together to defend (and solve their differences later). I am really sad and disapointed.

 

[caroline!]

They should learn from South American countries, we're unhackable because all of our databases are mountains of humid papers and most infrastructures are crumbling analog machines operated exclusively by guys named Juan

But the second the tanks went to Kiev i would think we would get together and respond in kind.

Tanks run out of fuel or are destroyed by infantry hiding in a forest and air units in minutes. They're big, slow and make a lot of noise, waging a war with only ground units just because you "have more than the enemy" is practically suicide in the 21st century, it's not 1918 anymore. Out in the open you're blown to pieces by air units and if you somehow get tanks inside a city there will be hordes of insurgents with RPGs hiding in every single building, plus landmines and traps everywhere, plus every road waiting to collapse under a tank's weight.

 

[Veseleil]

What's the point of even enabling comments on this one?

Freedom of speech, I guess. Just like people that appear on each Chinese related news just to post replies like: "China Bad, they spy", etc. are free to do so each time. Replies totally unrelated to the topic 99% of the time OFC.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Russian Cyberwarfare was strong even before the war. Freaking daisies at Redmond.

Right?

 

[Why_Me]

You have to hand it to the eastern Europeans, they are the masters of computer hacking. I can remember when the Romanians lead the way in computer hacking back in the 90's.

 

[lexluthermiester]

You have to hand it to the eastern Europeans, they are the masters of computer hacking.

Not any more or less than the rest of the world. As much hacking as they do to everyone, there's as much hacking being done TO them.

 

[Why_Me]

Not any more or less than the rest of the world. As much hacking as they do to everyone, there's as much hacking being done TO them.

Agreed the world has their fair share of hackers but Romania was king back in the day and the rest of those eastern Euro's were no slouch by any means. Bucharest could have been named the pseudo capital of the dark web.

 

[PapaTaipei]

And we are supposed to believe them. Just like Colin Powell ROFL.

 

[caroline!]

Freedom of speech, I guess. Just like people that appear on each Chinese related news just to post replies like: "China Bad, they spy", etc. are free to do so each time. Replies totally unrelated to the topic 99% of the time OFC.

"Both sides" spy on people but somehow you've always got shills vehemently defending one of the sides while bashing the other, sometimes reading their excuses is hilarious. But yeah, threads derail quickly that way.

recently blocking downloads of its popular Windows OS.

That's good news ngl.

 

[SentinelAeon]

Like i said, i am the first to point out all the wrongs of west and there is a lot of them. Human nature on west and east is the same and we are problematic by default, all our history we were doing nothing but kill eachother. For instance i agree that attacking iraq by false pretense was wrong. They should attack it saying they are going there to kill a dictator that killed 1000s and 1000s of their own people, gassing them, torturing them. Give the free electrion and if they want a psychopat to lead them, then thats fine by me. But surely attacking a mass murderer in Iraq is not the same as attacking a country with democratic elected leaders ? And i acknoledge that Ukraine army did its fair share of damage on the east of the country and that is bad, but legaly they were defending their own territory. I would like to read the news saying that anonymous attacked Russian infrastructure and put a couple of their plants offline. Obviously i know thats hard, i would have done it if it was easy and i knew how. But i think most people hate USA so much that they would rather sacrifise our brothers in Ukraine just to show that they are sticking it to the uncle Sam. I remember how much protests there were in Europe when USA attacked Iraq. Now that Russia attacked Ukraine there was a protest of like 50 Ukraines living in my country. I mean have people completely lost their sense of comparison ? I am telling you, the same thing happened when Hitler and Stalin started murdering people in their neighbouring countries. The whole world stood back thinking its not our problem. I hope we all still remember how that ended. All this would have been prevented if the Nato just put its troops inside Ukraine. Russia wouldnt attack then. Instead, USA pulled its people our of Ukraine before the war started. I do not even have the words to describe this.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Bottom line USA is damned if we do and damned if we don't helping other countries.

Let someone else be the worlds police.

 

[Why_Me]

Hi,
Bottom line USA is damned if we do and damned if we don't helping other countries.

Let someone else be the worlds police.

The US arms manufacturers aren't about to let that happen anytime soon.