Written by Phyo Thiri Lwin (Edited by Jenna Fung)
Globalization allows the people to be interconnected, integrated, and interacted by means of cooperating, collaborating, exchanging ideas, advancing technology, and trading commodities among countries easily nowadays. In contrast, because of globalization, the people are impacted once the local issues are turning into global issues. For example, we can see how the impact is enormous on both developed countries and developing countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic these days. Consequently, we have to rely on Internet technology and most of our time has to be spent online. When we are using the Internet for different purposes in our life, we have been breaching our data in cyberspace. Likewise, not only some governors but also some cybercriminals try to use the Internet as a weapon to threaten our security. Moreover, the wars have even happened not only on the ground battlefield but also in cyberspace these days for political purposes.
Recently, we can see some examples from the Russia and Ukraine conflicts. On February 24, 2022, the Russian forces started attacking Ukraine. According to Harvard Business Review, the Russian cyber force would prepare for attacking Ukraine and western energy, finance, and communications infrastructure. According to CyberNews, we could know that “70% of cyberattacks targeted Russia, with 5 billion incidents registered since March 5. Ukraine was targeted only in 19% of the cases, followed by the US (5%)” (Zhadan, 2022). Meanwhile, the U.S Cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency also warned of the impact of the Ukraine crisis on the U.S in terms of malicious cyber activity. Before the crisis happened, the Ukraine government’s sites were harmed by malware attacks. Microsoft also announced that they detected the malware attacks on the Ukraine government’s sites and its related agencies on January 13, 2022. And they also said that they deployed protections through Microsoft 365 Defender Endpoint Detection (EDR) and Anti-virus (AV).
On the other hand, the Anonymous hackers declared a cyberwar against Russia. Anonymous is the hacker group that is primarily known for its various cyberattacks against several governments, government institutions, government agencies, corporations, and the Church of Scientology. According to BBC News, the national TV of Russia was hacked and interrupted by them. Hackers from the Anonymous collective attacking Russia and bringing down websites like Kremlin.ru may have generated a lot of publicity. (Taube, 2022). In contrast, there were also cases where the Ukraine banks and government ministry’s web page went down and the greeting message on dozens of Ukrainian websites to visitors too on 23 February 2022 with a sort of DDoS attacks.
Regarding the Internet sanctions, we can see some cases like Ukraine’s representative sent the request to the ICANN GAC (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on Governmental Advisory Committee) to remove Russia’s domain (.ru) from the global web on March 1, 2022. SpaceX activated its service in Ukraine in order to provide the Internet to the Ukrainians who could not access the Internet due to the power outage.
By looking at Ukraine and Russia’s warfare, the war is happening as both offline and online warfare. DDoS attacks, phishing attacks, malware attacks, etc., can be widely seen, which has also proven that the Internet has prominently played a crucial role in shaping the physical world by linking with the digital world.
References
Burt, T. (2022, January 15). Malware attacks targeting Ukraine government – Microsoft On the Issues. The Official Microsoft Blog. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2022/01/15/mstic-malware-cyberattacks-ukraine-government/
The Cybersecurity Risks of an Escalating Russia-Ukraine Conflict. (2022, February 18). Harvard Business Review. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2022/02/the-cybersecurity-risks-of-an-escalating-russia-ukraine-conflict
Meagher, J. J., Tanglen, L. J., & Yammine, R. E. (2022, March 25). The Russia-Ukraine conflict and insurance for state-sponsored cyberattacks. Reuters. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/russia-ukraine-conflict-insurance-state-sponsored-cyberattacks-2022-03-25/
Milmo, D. (2022, February 27). Anonymous: the hacker collective that has declared cyberwar on Russia. The Guardian. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/anonymous-the-hacker-collective-that-has-declared-cyberwar-on-russia
Taube, F. (2022, February 28). Russia-Ukraine conflict: What role do cyberattacks play? DW. Retrieved April 30, 2022, from https://www.dw.com/en/russia-ukraine-conflict-what-role-do-cyberattacks-play/a-60945572
Tidy, J. (2022, February 25). Russian vigilante hacker: ‘I want to help beat Ukraine from my computer’. BBC. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60528594
Tidy, J. (2022, March 20). Anonymous: How hackers are trying to undermine Putin. BBC. Retrieved May 1, 2022, from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60784526.amp
Zhadan, A. (2022, March 10). 89% of global cyberattacks are aimed at Russia or Ukraine | CyberNews. Cybernews. Retrieved April 30, 2022, from https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/89-of-global-cyberattacks-are-aimed-at-russia-or-ukraine/