Today we know that the war has been planned for months, because the United States was not lying when it said that Putin was going to invade Ukraine and that is why, before that happened, the cyberterrorists of Vladimir Putin launched cyberattacks against Ukrainian hardware, which put the United States into action.
The secret mission of the USA and Ukraine
A group and team of members of the US Army’s Cyber Command along with a few engineers from private companies such as Microsoft landed on Ukrainian soil after an attack in October and November in complete silence. Their goal was to help Ukraine with cyberattacks on the country’s IT and civilian infrastructure, where they had to find hidden malware and prepare both hardware and software for the worst: an impending war.
Why does Ukraine support Russia? Much of this is not just because of the weaponry and “guts” of its military and civilians, but because cyberattacks are repelled and infrastructure is physically destroyed or will collapse. not.
In November, thanks to this secret mission, for example, malware was found on the railways that was excessively harmful because it had the ability to disable entire computer networks by deleting crucial files and leaving basic systems in their infancy. It was called Wiperware and luckily it was neutralized. If we take into account the fact that after the start of the war, 1 million Ukrainian civilians were able to escape by this means of transport, we can already assess the damage that Putin wanted to do and the importance of finding the said malware.
DDoS attacks and specific software to stop them
In February and as we now know, Russia launched a series of such attacks to destroy specific networks and physical infrastructure, where the Americans present reacted quickly, contacted Fortinet in just a few hours and pre-ordered specific software from “virtual machine”. mode that thwarts these attacks, something very similar to those that many major global CDNs have.
After eight hours, the software was installed on the servers of the Ukrainian police and they were able to keep the infrastructure active, not without fighting during this time with the attacks. But there’s more, on the same February 24, the day the invasion began, Microsoft detected an attempted reverse engineering in what they call “newly activated malware.”
Within three hours Microsoft had already released an update to mitigate the security flaw, a few minutes later Ukraine had installed it since the target was apparently that country’s military and NATO because their countries have been notified for the same reason in order to protect themselves.
Why is Microsoft involved in the cybersecurity of one or more countries? Because the attacks are based on Western software, mostly Windows-based, so it’s important not to repeat what was experienced in 2017 when malware from Russia disabled large numbers of servers and PCs in many parts of the world. Resetting everything cost $10 billion.
Russia’s army of cyberspies, hackers and engineers: one of the best in the world
Russia is very famous for its virtual army, with hackers and crackers everywhere. It ranges from breaching a game’s protection to breaking a country’s security. But then, why does Ukraine continue to keep its infrastructure standing? Well, today’s explanation hardly makes sense.
And it is nothing more than a containment of these attackers, where at the same time it seems that the same thing is being done with the army and its soldiers. The reasons seem to be to not leave Russia unprotected while Ukraine is under attack, so that the consequences in the virtual section don’t cause Ukraine and its war partners too much trouble.
The best example seems to be the communication between the army and the Russian bases, where they do not use encrypted phones, but use the same Ukrainian and ordinary mobile networks. This puts Ukraine in a favorable position in the war, as it records and blocks communications to the point that soldiers and generals raid phone shops looking for SIM cards to communicate with superiors.
One more sign that Russia is not the giant we all believe in despite the military and cyber-technological might it has. The war is not what they seem to portray it and at the moment it is a trump card for Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian push, some of that resistance coming from the secret mission with the states -United.