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Microsoft: Russian cyberespionage targets 42 Ukrainian allies



CLEVELAND (AP) – Coinciding with the relentless cyberattacks on Ukraine, state-sponsored Russian hackers conducted “strategic espionage” against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups in 42 countries supporting Kiev, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday. told.

“Since the beginning of the war, Russian targeting (of Ukraine’s allies) has been successful 29 percent of the time,” wrote Microsoft President Brad Smith, with data stolen in at least a quarter of successful network attacks.

Nearly two-thirds of cyberespionage targets involved NATO members. The United States was the main target, and Poland, the main channel of military aid flowing to Ukraine, was number 2. In the past two months, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Turkey have seen increased targeting.

A striking exception is Estonia, where Microsoft says it has detected no Russian cyberattacks since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. The company credited Estonia’s adoption of cloud computing, where it is easier to detect intruders. Without identifying them, Microsoft said “significant collective defense weaknesses remain” among several other European governments.

According to the 28-page report, half of the 128 targeted organizations are government agencies and 12% are non-governmental organisations, usually think tanks or humanitarian groups. Other targets include telecommunications, energy and defense companies.

Microsoft said Ukraine’s cyber defenses overall “proved to be stronger” than Russia’s capabilities “in waves of devastating cyberattacks against 48 different Ukrainian institutions and organizations”. The report said Moscow’s military hackers were careful not to release worms that destroy devastating data that could spread outside Ukraine, as the NotPetya virus did in 2017.

According to the report, “Defending Ukraine: Early Lessons from Cyber ​​Warfare,” “During the past month, the number of devastating attacks has dropped as the Russian army moved to intensify its attacks in the Donbas region.” The Redmond, Washington company has unique insight in this area due to the ubiquity of their software and threat detection teams.

Microsoft said that Ukraine also sets an example when it comes to data protection. A week before the Russian invasion, Ukraine switched from storing its data locally on servers in government buildings – making them vulnerable to air attacks – to distributing that data in the cloud hosted in data centers in Europe.

The report also evaluated Russian disinformation and propaganda aimed at “undermining Western unity and deflecting criticism of Russian military war crimes” and influencing people in non-aligned countries.

Using artificial intelligence tools, Microsoft said it estimated that “Russian cyber-penetration operations successfully increased the spread of Russian propaganda after the start of the war by 216 percent in Ukraine and 82 percent in the United States.”





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