Wednesday
Room 3
13:40 - 14:40
(UTC+01)
Talk (60 min)
Cyber warfare evolution: lessons from two years of russo-Ukrainian war
Think tanks and analysts have long speculated how cyber warfare would look in the first modern war. Were their predictions accurate or did the reality of the russo-Ukrainian war evolve into something different?
This presentation will examine the evolution of russia’s cyber operations in Ukraine over the course of the russo-Ukrainian war. We will go over the key examples of failures and successes selected from more than 2000 attacks (in 2022 alone) targeting everything from hospitals and critical infrastructure to military hardware:
- 14/2 defacement of government websites aka “Wait for the worst”
- HermeticWiper attack targeting financial, IT, and aviation sectors
- Viasat hack (T-1 hour before the invasion) and its impact
- Disinformation attacks on local communities in the wake of russia’s occupation of new territories
- 16/3 TV station hack using AI-generated video of President Zelensky calling Ukraine to surrender
- Attacks on Ukrainian military targets including artillery tablets used for ballistic calculations and planning
- An attack on a major telecom provider to thwart acoustic detection hardware that used cellular infrastructure
- Other prominent or novel attacks
Using the context of these cyber attacks, we will examine how russia adapted its cyber operations to improve collaboration between its cyber and kinetic military branches.
Finally, we will conclude this presentation with predictions of how russia may further shape its cyber warfare capabilities for targeting Ukraine or another neighbouring nation.