Microsoft Warns of Cyber Attack on Ukrainian Computer Networks

“If it seems that Russia is pummeling Ukraine with cyberattacks,” he stated, “and if that continues over the interval forward, we’ll work with our allies on the suitable response.”

Mr. Sullivan stated that the US had been working with Ukraine to harden its programs and American networks if the string of ransomware and different assaults from Russia accelerates in the US.

For President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Ukraine has usually been a testing vary for cyberweapons.

An assault on Ukraine’s Central Election Fee throughout a presidential election in 2014, wherein Russia sought unsuccessfully to alter the consequence, proved to be a mannequin for the Russian intelligence businesses; the US later discovered that they’d infiltrated the servers of the Democratic Nationwide Committee in the US. In 2015, the primary of two main assaults on Ukraine’s electrical grid shut off the lights for hours in several components of the nation, together with in Kyiv, the capital.

And in 2017, companies and authorities businesses in Ukraine had been hit with harmful software program referred to as NotPetya, which exploited holes in a sort of tax preparation software program that was extensively used within the nation. The assault shut down swaths of the financial system and hit FedEx and the transport firm Maersk as nicely; American intelligence officers later traced it to Russian actors. That software program, a minimum of in its total design, bears some resemblance to what Microsoft warned of on Saturday.

The brand new assault would wipe laborious drives clear and destroy information. Some protection consultants have stated such an assault might be a prelude to a floor invasion by Russia. Others suppose it might substitute for an invasion, if the attackers believed a cyberstrike wouldn’t immediate the sort of monetary and technological sanctions that Mr. Biden has vowed to impose in response.

John Hultquist, a number one cyberintelligence analyst at Mandiant, stated on Sunday that his agency had been telling its shoppers “to arrange for harmful assaults, together with assaults which might be designed to resemble ransomware.”

He famous that the Russian hacking unit referred to as Sandworm, which has since been carefully linked to the Russian army intelligence company, the G.R.U., had spent current years creating “extra subtle technique of important infrastructure assault,” together with in Ukraine’s energy grid.