The battle on Ukraine’s cyber frontline
In this edition, the cyber threat and response landscape–for criminals and governments–has become more robust.
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THE STORY
From the frontlines last year, I wrote a dispatch about the ways in which the war in Ukraine, when it first began in 2014, was one of technological innovation and subversion. As Russian forces moved across eastern Ukraine, among their primary targets was one unique to this century. The occupying forces captured internet infrastructure and routed it back to Russia. It is not enough anymore to annex land and physical space: Complete control is only achieved by annexing cyberspace as well.
Files leaked this March revealed how a company called NTC Vulkan bolstered Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cyberwarfare capabilities by training operatives, spreading disinformation, guiding Kremlin personnel on how to manipulate and surveil sections of the internet and exercising control over the internet in places it had conquered like Kherson and Donbas.