US, Britain Help Ukraine Prepare for Potential Russian Cyberassault (nytimes.com) 39
David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes reporting via the New York Times: In the closing days of 2015, the lights went out across a swath of Ukraine as Russian hackers remotely took over an electric utility's control center and flipped off one power station after another, while the company's operators stared at their screens helplessly. The next year, the same thing happened, this time around Kyiv, the capital.
Now the United States and Britain have quietly dispatched cyberwarfare experts to Ukraine in hopes of better preparing the country to confront what they think may be the next move by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as he again menaces the former Soviet republic: Not an invasion with the 175,000 troops he is massing on the border, but cyberattacks that take down the electric grid, the banking system, and other critical components of Ukraine's economy and government.
Russia's goal, according to American intelligence assessments, would be to make Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, look inept and defenseless -- and perhaps provide an excuse for an invasion.
The Russian cyberactivity was discussed by roughly a dozen officials, who requested anonymity because the information was derived from classified intelligence and sensitive discussions about how to mitigate the Russian threat. Those conversations have focused on whether Mr. Putin thinks that a crippling of Ukraine's infrastructure could be his best hope of achieving his primary goal: ousting the Ukrainian government and replacing it with a puppet leader. The calculus, one senior intelligence official said, would be that such an attack would not require him to occupy the country -- or suffer as many of the sanctions that would almost certainly follow a physical invasion.
Already Mr. Putin has been working to build support domestically and in Africa and South and Central America. Russian-led information campaigns have been focused on denigrating the Ukrainian government and accusing its leader of creating a humanitarian crisis in the country's east, where Ukrainian government forces have been battling Russia-led separatists for years, according to U.S. and allied officials. American officials declined to describe the cyberteams that have been inserted into Ukraine. In a statement, the Biden administration said only that "we have long supported Ukraine's efforts to shore up cyberdefenses and increase its cyberresiliency." A spokeswoman for the British government said the assistance that Britain and its allies were providing was defensive in nature. While neither government would provide details, officials said the United States was considering a larger deployment, including resources from U.S. Cyber Command. But it is unclear how much good a bigger team could do beyond demonstrating support.
The Russian cyberactivity was discussed by roughly a dozen officials, who requested anonymity because the information was derived from classified intelligence and sensitive discussions about how to mitigate the Russian threat. Those conversations have focused on whether Mr. Putin thinks that a crippling of Ukraine's infrastructure could be his best hope of achieving his primary goal: ousting the Ukrainian government and replacing it with a puppet leader. The calculus, one senior intelligence official said, would be that such an attack would not require him to occupy the country -- or suffer as many of the sanctions that would almost certainly follow a physical invasion.
Already Mr. Putin has been working to build support domestically and in Africa and South and Central America. Russian-led information campaigns have been focused on denigrating the Ukrainian government and accusing its leader of creating a humanitarian crisis in the country's east, where Ukrainian government forces have been battling Russia-led separatists for years, according to U.S. and allied officials. American officials declined to describe the cyberteams that have been inserted into Ukraine. In a statement, the Biden administration said only that "we have long supported Ukraine's efforts to shore up cyberdefenses and increase its cyberresiliency." A spokeswoman for the British government said the assistance that Britain and its allies were providing was defensive in nature. While neither government would provide details, officials said the United States was considering a larger deployment, including resources from U.S. Cyber Command. But it is unclear how much good a bigger team could do beyond demonstrating support.
Suggested Reading (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Suggested Reading (Score:4, Interesting)
If you're interested, the book Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers is a great in-depth look at this and relate events.
Agreed. Great book. Disturbing and scary. After that read "We Need to Talk About Putin: How the West Gets Him Wrong" by Mark Galeotti " The Ukraine is a testing & warmup ground for Russian hackers and methods.
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Not going to help (Score:5, Interesting)
Preparing for a cyberassault won't help too much when a physical assault comes (as Putin repeatedly has been threatening to do).
Re:Not going to help (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes agree. Frankly we need to just match Putin's deployment on Ukraine's border with an equivalent one on Belarus' border given Belarus has been carrying out asymmetric warfare against Europe for the last few years. Justification is equivalent, tell Putin if he wants to play that game we'll match him.
Then just like in 2008 when Bush sent US forces into Georgia, the Russians ran with their tail between their legs, because if there's one thing Putin can't deal with it's being called out and matched on his threats. Same when Erdogan shot down a Russian jet that infringed Turkey's airspace, for all the bluster about payback Russia never flew near Turkey's border again.
Putin's ability to stand up to the West militarily is non-existent, he knows it, we just need leaders to call it out like we used to. Do that and he'll soon stop picking fights he knows he'll end up just being embarrassed over. Russia's military build up is already significantly larger than it was when they invaded and illegally annexed Crimea, that's a testament to the fact we've been arming and training Ukraine to defend itself - step that up and make it economically and politically infeasible for Putin to invade. He's only considering doing it now because he knows the clock is ticking towards Ukraine being a truly independent state that can defend itself - god forbid a country ever be free of being a USSR vassal state.
That or just apply crippling sanctions on him now by cutting of Russia's access to the global financial system and tell him the sanctions will be removed when the threats are removed.
Certainly waiting until he invades other countries and then acting has been a pretty hopeless prospect so far and has only emboldened him given Russia now has occupying forces in Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and depending on your views of the legitimacy of Assad, given the vast majority of the country wants him gone, Syria. The only thing that's worked against him is calling his bluff, so we should keep doing that.
If we don't call him out and stop him at Ukraine, it'll be Lithuania, Lativa, and Estonia; he's already been carrying out the initial assymetric warfare he started with in Ukraine on these countries, and has also been stoking the same in the former Yugoslav states trying to stir up the Serbs to invade their neighbours, and no doubt carry out ethnic cleansing again.
And yes, blah blah blah, "but America". I don't care. That doesn't make Russia's actions remotely acceptable. It doesn't mean we wouldn't be wholly in the right in doing everything we can to halt Russia's aggressive actions in Europe. Putin's actions to try and annex and control foreign states are no different to British imperialism in Africa - it's an out of date, unacceptable mindset that must be stamped out before others, like China, get emboldened to start pursuing it in Asia.
Russia never stopped fighting the cold war. The West did, and for whatever reason successive leaders seem to have forgotten how we won it and are pursuing the same mistakes of appeasement that prolonged it last time. Just end it, who gives a fuck about political correctness in the face of a despot trying to start World War III; cut him off before he succeeds.
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Re:Not going to help (Score:5, Interesting)
This is how wars start: with propaganda saying "we just need to hang tough, they will cave in an instant."
That is one way wars start. The Falklands war, for example, started with a cost cutting measure when Margaret Thatcher chose to withdraw British defensive ("hunter killer") submarines from the South Atlantic and the Argentine generals misread that as an invitation to come and take over. The second world war started with appeasement.
What's almost always true is that wars start with a miscalculation from one or both sides.
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Yes agree. Frankly we need to just match Putin's deployment on Ukraine's border with an equivalent one on Belarus' border given Belarus has been carrying out asymmetric warfare against Europe for the last few years.
The problem with that is that we don't actually want to invade Belarus. The secondary problem is that Putin might be willing to trade Ukraine for Belarus, calling the bluff.
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The problem with that is that we don't actually want to invade Belarus. The secondary problem is that Putin might be willing to trade Ukraine for Belarus, calling the bluff.
No kidding. Putin's diarrhetic turd Lukashenko has turned Belarus into a toilet bowl. Russia only keeps it around so that their military forces can practice slaughtering civilians. The Ukraine is a million times nicer and more valuable.
Re:Not going to help (Score:4, Informative)
Putin's ability to stand up to the West militarily is non-existent
It's not. Russia has a formidable nuclear arsenal.
Re: Not going to help (Score:2)
In 2008, Russians achieved all their goals, they took over and occupied Georgian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, to make sure Georgians won't try to take them by force again. The loss in this war, sent the political career of Georgia's aggressively pro-western president into tailspin, this was Kremlin's other goal. Saakashvili is in jail now.
Re:Not going to help (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes agree. Frankly we need to just match Putin's deployment on Ukraine's border with an equivalent one on Belarus' border given Belarus has been carrying out asymmetric warfare against Europe for the last few years. Justification is equivalent, tell Putin if he wants to play that game we'll match him.
I am sure that tactic will put a massive smile on Putin's face as you play his game that he can do better and cheaper in the region. The west spending 100's of billions defending against an unlikely threat, just what we have been doing to them for years with training exercises and deployments in their part of the world. All he has to do is keep doing his training exercises on those border areas to cost us a fortune and he gets the added justification on the world stage that it is needed due to western buildup in the region.
Always about what's in it for the allies (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure America ever gets anything out of playing the role of "world policeman", really? There was a lot of rhetoric about us trying to preserve freedom around the world, back in the "Cold War" days. But right now, America is trillions of dollars in debt and the last thing it needs is a prolonged war with one of the other world super-powers.
Putin's actions to try to annex foreign states might be morally wrong and "unacceptable", but so is a whole lot that goes on in nations like China when they're not
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I'm not sure America ever gets anything out of playing the role of "world policeman", really?
The original idea was to prevent yet another world war. And actually if we can prevent that, it's worth doing (the only problem is when we start doing nonsense stuff, like invading Iraq pre-emptively).
At the end of the day, America has to ask the tough questions like "Does preserving the Ukraine benefit America? What do they bring to the table for us?" I'm not sure there's much of an answer for that?
It's already decided. America and the west are not going to defend Ukraine militarily against a Russian invasion. That might be the wrong decision, but it's decided.
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I really wouldn't bother, mate. Even if you are American, this is not a place where you can advance facts and logic and get a fair hearing. Just read the comments in this thread and weep.
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Putin can barely feed his military. Those poor soldiers have been buying and trading MRE's with the enemy for many years. Ukraine isn't defenseless, they have thousands of tanks, aircraft, and almost a million (including reserve) soldiers.
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More to the point, they took the part of Ukraine that had value to Putin and his cronies. They realized they could use it for propping up their support in Russia since that is mostly a Russian speaking enclave that they stole. It doesn't have squat resource-wise. And Putin and his Kleptocrats have no use for more resources seeing as they already own all of Russia's. Now they just trying to re-create the Soviet Empire piece by impoverished piece. Spread the misery is their motto.
Ukraine is already experts on cyberattack! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Remote monitoring is required to manage a large grid with many generators. Of course it could use a dedicated cable to each location, but that brings problems. One cut or damaged repeater and you lose monitoring capability, which probably means shutting the plant down until it gets fixed. By itself it also doesn't protect against someone secretly connecting their own equipment to the network to interfere with it, or attacking the firmware of the repeaters at source.
So actually being internet connected isn't
Consequence of an all out cyberwar? (Score:2)
Ukrainian geeks take note then build toolkits (Score:2, Troll)
Individuals and businesses should have complete image-based backups. Really important files should be backed up offshore because you may lose all your equipment to bombardment or invasion. If you don't have a complete OS reloading toolkit and offline backups that's piss poor but you can begin right now. Even in peacetime it's foolish not to prepare since any PC can die without warning.
Personal and other small files should be burned to DVD because burned media are not vulnerable to malware and can be read vi
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Putinist downmodder detected.
Hungary/Czechoslovakia 2.0 (Score:2)
For those not familiar, neither were worth a hot war during the early Cold War (which never ended as Russia is an enemy society, not a society with an enemy government and anyone contending otherwise is an FSB shill) and Moscow was left to make a (globally bad) example of itself which globally discredited the Soviet Union even among the many naive young Communists.
Ukraine would be worth repeating what was done in A-stan to help the locals resist Moscow but not worth the risk of a hot war between NATO and Ru
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I heard it was the Romans that f-cked up the MidEast, and before that it was the Persians, and before that it was the Hittites, and before that it was the Babylonians, and before that it was the Sumerians. The last two were okay though since they were home-grown boys. I think we should fight against the Roman Empire, they might come back.