Why Russia’s cyber attacks fell on deaf ears. Report Economist
Despite the Russian cyber-warriors, the lights, electricity and water in Ukraine remained on. The banks remained open. Part of the answer lies in Russia's missteps. The Economist article
Wars are testing grounds for new technologies. The Korean War saw the use of large-scale fighter jets for the first time. Israel pioneered the use of drones as radar decoys in the 1973 war with Egypt. And the 1991 Gulf War was the debut of gps-guided weapons. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is the first time that two mature cyberpowers have confronted each other in wartime over computer networks. The result is a lesson on the limits of cyber-power and the importance of having a solid defense – writes The Economist .
The popular notion of cyber warfare has been shaped by disturbing and dystopian scenarios of an "electronic Pearl Harbour", first envisaged in the 1990s and accentuated by the relentless digitization of society. These fears have been fueled by glimpses of the possible. The American-Israeli Stuxnet worm, which came to light in 2010, damaged Iranian nuclear machinery with diabolical ingenuity. Russian malware sabotaged Ukraine's electricity grid in 2015 and 2016.
However, when full-blown cyber warfare came to Ukraine, the result was modest. Not for lack of trying. Russia has launched large quantities of malware against Ukraine – the biggest attack ever, some officials say. There have been some notable successes, such as the disruption of Viasat, a commercial satellite communications service used by the Ukrainian government and military, less than an hour before the invasion.
But despite the Russian cyberwarriors, the lights, electricity and water in Ukraine remained on. The banks remained open. Perhaps most importantly, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, continued to make nightly television broadcasts for the nation. How?
Part of the answer lies in Russia's missteps. He limited his initial attacks because he thought Ukraine's infrastructure would soon come under his control. Russian cyber forces also have less experience integrating cyber operations with military ones than their American counterparts, who have been doing it for 30 years.
The conflict also shows how cyber power in warfare has been misinterpreted. Spectacular cyberattacks are rare because they are much more challenging than you think. The Russian sabotage of Ukraine's electricity grid in 2016, for example, required more than two years of preparation. Viasat-like strikes are not mass-produced missiles that can be fired at any target. They are custom made.
All of this has two implications. One is that cyber campaigns can peter out. Russian troops have planned a week-long war. So did its hackers. As the invasion dragged on, they had to change their ambitions. They resorted to simpler attacks, which could be delivered at a high pace and on a large scale. These were and remain a challenge for the Ukrainian forces, but a manageable one.
The second implication is that elaborate cyber offensives are often necessary especially when outright violence is out of the question. If war rages on anyway, why use refined code when a missile will do the trick? Russia's recent airstrikes show that Iranian drones are a cheaper and easier way to knock out the power grid.
Wartime cyber offensives tend to complement military action rather than replace it. The most important cyber operations are not those that aim to shut down banks and airports, but those that quietly carry out intelligence gathering and psychological warfare, tasks that have been part of the battle long before computers or the Internet.
But if the cyber conflict has not been successful, it is Ukraine that deserves the greatest credit. Russia has treated Ukraine as a cyber proving ground in the years following its first invasion in 2014. Ukraine was therefore prepared. On February 24, its IT teams spread out across the country, so that they were dispersed. Much of Ukraine's digital infrastructure has migrated to servers abroad, out of reach of Russian bombs.
Western governments and their cyber agencies also played an important role, sharing information, fortifying Ukrainian networks and eliminating Russian intruders in December and January. Private companies like Microsoft, an American tech giant, and Eset, a Slovakian cybersecurity company, have also been monitoring traffic on Ukrainian networks, often using artificial intelligence to sift through huge volumes of code. “Ukraine's cyber defense critically relies on a coalition of countries, companies and NGOs,” Microsoft wrote in a lessons learned report in June.
It is still early to draw solid conclusions. The war is on and new cyber threats are appearing all the time. Russia may be holding some of its most powerful cyber capabilities in reserve. However, the first signs are encouraging. It has often been thought that the cyber domain is a playground for attackers and that cyber threats are always capable of penetrating and wreaking havoc. Ukraine has defied expectations and demonstrated that even one of the most gifted cyber powers on the planet can be kept at bay with a disciplined and well-organized defense.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by Epr Comunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/perche-gli-attacchi-informatici-della-russia-sono-caduti-nel-vuoto-report-economist/ on Sat, 10 Dec 2022 06:44:39 +0000.