{"id":10283,"date":"2017-01-30T20:18:28","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T20:18:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/?p=10283"},"modified":"2017-01-30T23:23:40","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T23:23:40","slug":"ukrainian-hackers-new-cyber-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/informnapalm.org\/en\/ukrainian-hackers-new-cyber-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian hackers and new cyber reality"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week a Ukrainian team of \u201cwhite\u201d hackers, called dcua<\/strong> from Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI), was recognized as the best team in the area of cybersecurity among more than 12 thousand teams from all over the world according to CTF (Capture the flag)<\/a>\u00a0in 2016.<\/p>\n

This news was not a surprise for us because for more than a year now the InformNapalm team has been cooperating with Ukrainian Cyber Alliance (UCA) which includes hackers from the Ukrainian teams Trinity, FalconsFlame, KiberHunta (Cyber Hunta), and Ruh8. This year UCA executed many successful hacking operations to counter-attack the Russian propaganda (additional information, as well as the analysis of all these operations, can be found on our website using hashtag #UCA<\/a>). The most successful among them was a hacking of the office of Vladislav Surkov, Assistant to the President of Russia that got a code name of #SurkovLeaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The result of this operation was a resignation of Aleksandr Pavlov, Manager of the Office of the Assistant to the Russian President Vladislav Surkov, which was reported by the Russian newspaper \u201cVedomosti\u201d<\/a>. It generated a great deal of interest in media sources around the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Authenticity of the hacked documents was confirmed by many experts, but unfortunately all the credits of Ukrainian hackers were given to different international secret services. Even well regarded foreign expert Mark Galeotti, who in 2014 took <\/a>\u00a0the Kremlin \u201cdoctrine by Gerasimov\u201d to pieces, \u00a0doubted <\/a>that Ukrainian hackers were able to do that. Curiously, some experts explained <\/a>their doubts using the reason that our analysis of the hacked data from Surkov\u2019s administrative office was published in \u201cperfect English\u201d, as well as in Bulgarian. We want to remind that InformNapalm is an international community, and activists from around the world are involved in our projects. We are glad to get any kind of help and to set up a new language version of the website is a matter of fifteen minutes for us – and then they perform their work depending on their potential and desire. Bulgarian version of the website became one of our most active resources and \u201cfluent English\u201d in the 21st century became common long time ago.<\/p>\n

We are happy to hear any information about Ukrainian hackers and the recognition they are given by the international community. \u00a0Ukrainian IT specialists \u00a0are<\/a> among the best ones in the world, and the last 2.5 years of the cyber war with Russia made them true masters.<\/p>\n

However, the recognition of the importance of cyber security and protection from digital threats under the new circumstances, imposed by Russia, slowly \u00a0reached the West too<\/a>. Not only because of the \u00a0hacker attacks on German Bundestag<\/a> and interference in the election process in the USA – \u00a0according to <\/a>\u00a0NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the number of digital attacks on NATO has grown significantly.<\/p>\n

According to the German newspaper Die Welt<\/a>, Stoltenberg said during a meeting in Davos: \u201cAccording to our up-to-date information, there were 500 dangerous cyberattacks on NATO facilities every month in 2016, which required intensive interference of our experts. It is an approximately 60% increase over 2015. The majority of these attacks were performed not by private individuals but were sponsored by state institutions in other countries … I am extremely concerned about this development. Cyber defence will play an important role at the next NATO summit, and we will need to step up our efforts in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n

Potentially cyber attacks are very dangerous as they can compromise energy networks, health care facilities and other critical infrastructure. \u201cThey can also harm NATO\u2019s defence capability and the work of our armed forces. At the moment all military activities are based on the transmission of data. So, if that fails, it can cause serious damage\u201d, explained Stoltenberg.<\/p>\n

Therefore, cyber attacks of a certain scale can lead to implementation of collective defence under Article 5 of NATO Statute, believes NATO Secretary General.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He also expressed concern about possible data manipulation during election process: \u201cNATO has some documents from different governments of the state members of our alliance in its disposition, and they are concerned that hackers would try to interfere in national election campaigns, undermining democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

For some time now, according to Stoltenberg, NATO has made their crisis teams available to its member states to help them protect their networks from such attacks.<\/p>\n

At the present moment, with constantly changing security area and with it becoming more unstable, there is a need of such powerful organisations like NATO. \u201cThe Alliance is constantly changing and it is able to adapt to new terms. The world is changing and we are changing together with it – we have been doing it for 70 years now.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is obvious for us, that the focus of Russian propaganda recently moved from the USA to Europe, in particular to Germany, the locomotive of the anti-Russian sanctions. More often Kremlin propaganda spreads the false stories trying to drive a wedge between Ukraine and its western partners. Not long time ago our media source also became the victim of such spreading of false information:<\/p>\n

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