Google’s threat analysis group has released a report on the role of cyberattacks in Russia-Ukraine conflict and found that threat actors backed by the Russian government have used cyberspace to gain a decisive advantage through an aggressive, multipronged effort.
The attackers have not only targeted Ukraine’s military and government organizations but also its critical infrastructure, public services and utilities, information space and media, Google said in a blog post published Thursday.
According to the report, Russia has worked to shape the public perception of the war by leveraging the full spectrum of information operations with three goals in mind: undermining the government of Ukraine, fracturing international support for the Eastern European country and maintaining domestic support in Russia for the war.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has transformed Eastern Europe’s cybercriminal ecosystem, which may have extended consequences relating to the scale of cybercrime and cooperation between criminal groups globally, Google stated in the blog post.
Also noted in the post was a “trend towards specialization in the ransomware ecosystem that blends tactics across actors, making definitive attribution more difficult.”
The report, which included additional research from Mandiant and Google’s Trust & Safety organization, concludes that Russian government-backed threat actors will continue to carry out cyberattacks against Ukraine and NATO partners to advance Russia’s strategic objectives and ramp up destructive attacks in response to battlefield developments.
