Russia Ukraine Conflict: A Potential for a full fledged Cyber War

At this very moment, the biggest news is Russia has declared war against Ukraine. Although the political situation between two neighboring countries was always unstable, a lot of people reacted surprisingly to Russia’s declaration of war against Ukraine. Obviously it means that cyber warfare will play a major part during the conflict as Russia has previously deployed multiple cyber attacks on Ukraine since 2013, constantly jeopardizing network security. Although a large scale cyber war is yet to happen, the possibility is higher than ever especially during the recent time. Cyber Warfare between Russia and Ukraine Ukraine has previously encountered multiple cyber attacks from Russia since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Although these attacks didn’t lead to a large scale cyber war, Ukraine has suffered significant damage from those cyber attacks.

• In 2015, Russia deployed two malwares namely KillDisk and BlackEnergy to compromise Ukraine’s electricity grid.
• In 2016, Russia again caused power outage in Ukraine by deploying CrashOverride malware.
• In 2017, Russia started a series of global cyber attacks by Petya and NotPetya malware. Although several countries suffered the damage, Ukraine was the main target.

In this year, Russia has launched DDoS attacks targeting banks and government websites of Ukraine. HermeticWiper, a variant of wiper malware, has also been discovered which attacked Ukrainian organizations. The country has suffered so much cyber attacks from Russia since 2013 that Ukraine is often called “test range” of Russian cyber operations. However, Ukraine does possess local expertise when it comes to cyber protection and even receives support from other countries which include American Cyber Command. Concern and Mitigation against Cyber Attacks Despite having local expertise and western support for cybersecurity, Russia has successfully deployed NotPetya malware. India was also among the other countries that suffered from this cyber attack. Cyber attacks generally play as a strategic role between two or more countries’ geopolitical conflicts. An all-out cyber war would result in global economic implications and significant impact across multiple industries. Since India is deeply connected to global supply chains, cyber war would inevitably cause a massive impact. Therefore, precautions must be undertaken for a secured cyber defense

• Constant monitoring of online networks
• Cybersecurity on endpoint devices
• Regular checking of networks for vulnerabilities
• Continuously updating IT infrastructure for a better security

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