As Ukraine approaches an important period of presidential and parliamentary elections, the country should steel itself for an increase in cyber-attacks against businesses, infrastructure and state institutions, officials and experts are warning.
London-based investigators are also warning that Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency is sending more operatives to Ukraine who will help coordinate efforts to undermine Ukraine’s democracy as voters prepare to head to the polls.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is one government department that’s coming under increasingly frequent attack from foreign hackers, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin revealed at a security conference in Warsaw on Oct. 24.
“We see at least one cyber attack per week, only in our ministry,” said Klimkin, adding that Ukraine and its allies can still do more to develop specialized measures to protect against such threats.
Ukrainian infrastructure with outdated protections in place is still seen as particularly vulnerable to sophisticated cyber attacks, according to Ukrainian officials, who say that Ukraine and Europe must do more to increase their joint defenses.
“Imagine what will happen if the lights disappear in the city five days before the elections,” said Klimkin in Warsaw.
In Brussels on Oct. 17, Klimkin said that Ukraine has seen about 6,000 cyber-attacks of Russian origin over the past four years, since the onset of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Since the outbreak of war, Ukraine has become a testing ground for new forms of hybrid, modern warfare that includes a continual wave of hacking attacks.
Oleh Dervienko, head of Information Systems Security Partners, or ISSP, a leading cybersecurity company in Kyiv, called the relentless hacking attacks on Ukraine a “massive, coordinated cyber invasion,” in a recent interview.
“Ukraine has become a laboratory for tactics of subversion, false-flag attacks, hacking and interference,” said James Sherr, an associate fellow and former head of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, a London-based international affairs think-tank.
Security service officials in Kyiv say that there is strong evidence connecting attacks in Ukraine to Russian military intelligence. Signature data left behind after hacking attacks often links them to known hacking groups in Krasnodar, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Now, experts and investigators say that Russian intelligence operatives who are allegedly coordinating the attacks against Ukraine will seek to step up their activities as the country approaches a period of elections.
“We must assume that the Russian GRU [military intelligence agency] are already interfering [with upcoming elections] and that they are already escalating this,” said Christo Grozev, an expert cyber-sleuth for the London-based investigative agency Bellingcat.
According to Grozev, Bellingcat’s sources in Ukraine say they’re seeing more GRU operatives arriving in Ukraine to coordinate disruptive efforts, including hacking and disinformation campaigns, as Ukrainian elections approach.
