Russia Has Complete Information Dominance in Ukraine

By James J. Coyle, Atlantic Council

Armed men, believed to be Russian servicemen, forced their way into a Ukrainian airbase in Crimea with armored vehicles, automatic fire, and stun grenades on March 22, 2014. As Russia seized Crimea, mobile telephone services were blocked, Russian naval ships jammed radio communications, Crimean government websites were knocked offline, telecommunications offices were raided, and cables cut.

Hackers have consistently used low-level cyber warfare tactics to advance Russian goals in Ukraine.

A dedicated group of hackers successfully infected the e-mail systems of the Ukrainian military, counterintelligence, border patrol, and local police. The hackers use a spear-phishing attack in which malware is hidden in an attachment that appears to be an official Ukrainian government email. For the most part, the technologies are not advanced but the attacks have been persistent. Lookingglass, a cybersecurity firm, suspects the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is the culprit behind the virus dubbed Operation Armageddon.

The Russian government is likely behind an even more dangerous virus. Since 2010 BAE Systems has been monitoring the activities of malware they dubbed Snake, and numerous digital footprints point to the Russian Bear. Moscow time zone stamps were left in the code and Russian names are written into the software. Other clues point to the Kremlin. "It's unlikely to be hacktivists who made this. The level of sophistication is too high. It is very well written—and extremely stealthy," observed Dave Garfield, BAE's Managing Director for cyber security.

According to the IT security company Symantec, Snake has infected dozens of computers in the office of Ukraine's Prime Minister and at least ten Ukrainian embassies since 2012. Snake was used against the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to access documents on the Ukraine crisis. The malware establishes a "digital beachhead" that allows its operators to deliver malicious code to the targeted networks. The implications are far-reaching: "Russia not only now has complete informational dominance in Ukraine," an intelligence analyst told the Financial Times, "it also has effective control of the country's digital systems, too. It has set the stage."

(More here.)