Cyber Firms Warn on Suspected Russian Plan To Attack Ukraine (reuters.com)

Jim Finkle, reporting for Reuters: Cisco Systems on Wednesday warned that hackers have infected at least 500,000 routers and storage devices in dozens of countries with highly sophisticated malicious software, possibly in preparation for another massive cyber attack on Ukraine. Cisco's Talos cyber intelligence unit said it has high confidence that the Russian government is behind the campaign, dubbed VPNFilter, because the hacking software shares code with malware used in previous cyber attacks that the U.S. government has attributed to Moscow. Cisco said the malware could be used for espionage, to interfere with internet communications or launch destructive attacks on Ukraine, which has previously blamed Russia for massive hacks that took out parts of its energy grid and shuttered factories. Head of Ukraine's cyber police said on Wednesday that the agency is aware of new large malware campaign, and that it is working to protect Ukraine against possible new cyber threat.

Comments

Re:How massive?

[KixWooder]

Squirrels and/or hurricanes aren't malicious actors with intent.

Russia failing to make friends

[Anonymous Coward]

If Russia is trying to convince Ukraine to ally with Russia instead of the European Union, they are going about it in exactly the wrong way.

Re:Russia failing to make friends

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ukraine is just the example to all the others.

Re:Russia failing to make friends

[Kjella]

On the contrary, an ongoing territorial dispute may be the best way to lock Ukraine in a stalemale, the way Cyprus had the EU stalled and like China and Taiwan are today. Russia has been losing allies since the 90s, back then the dividing line ran through Germany now they've lost pretty much all of Eastern Europe from the Baltics in the north to the Slavic countries in the south and the western sphere of influence has been crawling eastwards into ex-Soviet territory. Maybe the country was divided when the unrest started but I think in a few years Russia would be holding the short end of that stick anyway.

A full membership in EU/NATO would put them right at Putin's doorstep. Not just the proximity to Moscow, Ukraine is big both in terms of territory and manpower while Crimea is absolutely essential to Russia's navy. Maybe this will push the people in a pro-western direction but formally this makes Ukraine a hot potato because either you acknowledge their full territory which would make you a party to the conflict or you de facto recognize that Russia has taken it and isn't going to give it back, both of which are politically untenable. Even if it's not a hot conflict it can potentially stall things for decades and if anyone gets too cozy I'm sure the unrest will flare up for reasons "unknown".

I think Putin got all he could reasonably hope for, maybe he was hoping for a massive overreaction so he could send Russian tanks all the way to Kiev to protect the Russian minority but I doubt it as it would have been really messy. The Ukrainian response was also clearly limited to avoid provoking an all-out war with Russia, they certainly could have struck back harder. As for Putin, how many allies does he have left to lose? There's Belarus that he got in his pocket, he's supporting a few whack jobs down in the Middle East but as a military and economic bloc he's pretty lonely unless he gets friendly with China. I think he just wants it to stop before Russia has their own Euromaidan...

Wrong question.

[Anonymous Coward]

How massive? So just how much damage is done when you're lying on the ground and someone kicks you in the face? How long did it take to recover from that? Was it worse than the other one kicking your crotch?
If not, let's imply that it's ok to be kicked in the crotch.

Re: Confidence level is high!

[king neckbeard]

The concern is that there are lots of political reasons to lie, and absent hard evidence, they can turn "uses off-the-shelf-malware and a tor exit node" into "high confidence." Basically, if we can't see the evidence ourselves, we should give an assessment from anybody with major government contracts zero confidence until we see direct evidence.