Anna Forrester
A report by Lookingglass Cyber Solutions‘ cyber threat intelligence group claims Russia is behind a cyber warfare and espionage campaign against government, law enforcement and military officials in Ukraine.
The company said Tuesday the “Operation Armageddon: Cyber Espionage as a Strategic Component of Russian Modern Warfare” report discusses findings from its independent investigation of the “state-sponsored” attacks.
“In terms of ‘Operation Armageddon,’ we honestly expected to see more outages based on prior actions from the Russians against Estonia, but this time it seems they leveraged the Internet to gain a more intel-specific advantage,” said Lookingglass CEO Chris Coleman.
The report, which confirms claims by Ukraine’s security service, states the campaign has been active since mid-2013 and targets information on Ukrainian military strategies to give a decision-making advantage to Russia.
Lookingglass said it also found a direct correlation between the ongoing war and the attack timing, particularly around the signing of the Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement.
The attacks begin with a spear phishing email that appears to come from the same group due to the reuse of infrastructure, malware samples and passwords, the company added.
Lookingglass noted that Russian military doctrine points to increased information warfare as a modern tactic to support kinetic warfare and political objectives.
