Cyberattacks Increasing And The Growing Threat

Millions of Ukrainians forced offline: who’s behind one of the biggest ever cyberattacks

RT

Ukraine’s primary mobile network provider, Kyivstar, has been brought down by what is described as one of the biggest cyberattacks ever, leaving millions of customers without mobile phones and home internet service on Tuesday.

1. What happened?
   Ukraine's largest telecommunications provider suffered a major hacker attack on Tuesday, knocking out mobile phone service to millions of people. Mobile communications and access to the internet were down throughout the day. The attack on Kyivstar, which has 24.3 million mobile customers and over 1 million home internet subscribers, has led to a ripple effect that has caused outages of IT infrastructure and disrupted services at banks and some state institutions.

1. Who was affected?
   The cyberattack caused a widely felt technical failure and disrupted the operations of many of Ukraine’s major financial institutions. The largest state-owned bank, PrivatBank, was affected by the hack as the work of some of its offices, ATMs, and point-of-sale (POS) terminals used by businesses to process card payments was disrupted because they rely on Kyivstar SIM cards. Some cash machines of other big banks, including Oshadbank and Monobank, were not working either. Air raid alert systems in the city of Sumy also reportedly malfunctioned due to the outage.

1. Why is it significant?
   The incident has heavily impacted Kiev and far beyond, including major cities and regions, affecting mobile and fixed-line services with a knock-on impact on sectors, including airstrike alert systems and banking. The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said on Wednesday that the attack on Kyivstar has inflicted critical damage to its digital infrastructure, with IT systems being partially destroyed. Restoring operations will take time, the service said.
   The Ukrainian military relies heavily on smartphones and mobile data to communicate and coordinate operations, especially on encrypted messaging applications. While the country has other cell phone providers and the military uses Starlink satellite connection extensively, the Kyivstar outage could affect Ukrainian troops’ ability to coordinate in some places.

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UK at risk of ‘catastrophic’ cyber attack ‘at any moment’ – report

RT

The United Kingdom is vulnerable to a “catastrophic” cyber attack that could cripple large sections of its most critical infrastructure, a parliamentary report has warned.

The report, published on Wednesday by the UK parliament’s Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy (JCNSS), claims that the government failed to adequately invest in systems designed to prevent large-scale cyber attacks. It was also highly critical of the UK’s Home Office – under whose remit the prevention of cyber attacks falls – and said that former Home Secretary Suella Braverman had neglected the issue.

The committee said that Braverman showed no interest in the prevention of ransomware, a type of cybercrime in which data and files are stolen and a payment is demanded to return the files or prevent them from being released.

“Clear political priority is given instead to other issues, such as illegal migration and small boats,” the report said, adding that a “catastrophic” attack – which it said might come “at any moment” – could pose a serious “threat to physical safety of human life.”

The UK’s critical national infrastructure vital to the proper functioning of society, including energy and water supply, as well as health, transportation, and telecommunications, is also in severe jeopardy, the report warned.

“In the likely event of a massive, catastrophic ransomware attack, the failure to rise to meet this challenge will rightly be seen as an inexcusable strategic failure,” Dame Margaret Beckett, the chair of the JCNSS, told Sky News on Wednesday.

The National Health Service (NHS) was also identified as a possible target, with the committee noting that it relies on out-of-date systems which complicate even “simple upgrades” because of a historical lack of investment.

Report: China Already Hacking into U.S. Utilities, Pipeline, Port Companies

China’s threat to America now includes schemes to disrupt power and water supplies, communications and even transportation systems, according to officials cited in a new report.

Experts quoted by the Washington Post explained that hackers linked to China’s People’s Liberation Army already have succeeded in breaching “the computer systems of about two dozen critical entities over the past year.”

The goal, the report describes, is to find ways to “sow panic and chaos or snarl logistics in the event of a U.S.-China conflict in the Pacific.”

Those in a bull’s-eye already include a water utility in Hawaii, a port along the West Coast and an oil and gas pipeline, those experts told the publication.

“The hackers also attempted to break into the operator of Texas’s power grid, which operates independently from electrical systems in the rest of the country,” the report noted.

The report, citing anonymous sources, said there also were several targets outside the United States.

The report noted no industrial controls so far have been disrupted, but the fact that Hawaii has been targeted suggests the intent to impact America’s operation of its Pacific Fleet, such as shipping troops or equipment.

The report said there previously were reports of a “Volt Typhoon” campaign being conducted against the U.S.

“It is very clear that Chinese attempts to compromise critical infrastructure are in part to pre-position themselves to be able to disrupt or destroy that critical infrastructure in the event of a conflict, to either prevent the United States from being able to project power into Asia or to cause societal chaos inside the United States — to affect our decision-making around a crisis,” charged Brandon Wales, who is with the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.