Cyber War Coincides with Russia-Ukraine War

The Russia-Ukraine war marks the first time a two-way cyber war is taking place alongside a physical conflict, Nachreiner said. Among the attacks are state-sponsored Russian attackers targeting Ukrainian websites with distributed-denial-of -ervice (DDoS) attacks.

“They’re doing a lot of DDoS campaigns and financial cyberattacks against various Ukrainian companies and government sites while they’re carrying on a physical campaign as well,” he said. “But it’s also going the other way, too, and it’s not necessarily just Ukraine. I’m sure Ukraine might have some both defensive and offensive cyber actions against Russia, but more interestingly … I would say most democratic or Western nations are pro-Ukraine and a lot of hacktivists from around the world have started doing things against Russia. I would definitely put this more on disruption than breaching the military organization and affecting some physical campaign. But it’s very interesting to see how a physical war is certainly from this day forward going to carry a cyber war along with it, both from the state-sponsored attackers, but potentially also from hacktivists that have a view on it that might target one or another site as well.”