Several European heads of military cyberdefense forces on Wednesday said that Russia has been far less effective than expected in employing digital combat capabilities in its offensive against Ukraine.
“Among cybersecurity experts, we were pretty sure that there would be a cyber-Pearl Harbor based on past experience of Russian behavior and capabilities,” said General Karol Molenda, head of Poland’s National Cyber Security Centre, referring to Japan’s attack on the US base in Honolulu during World War II.
However, Ukraine was prepared and “withstood attacks from Russia,” Molenda told a meeting of the International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille, France.
Photo: AFP
This shows that you can prepare for cyberconflict against Russia, which he said was “good at offensive capabilities, but not so good at defense.”
He cited multiple cyberattacks that the country had experienced, mainly the work of independent hackers.
Lithuania’s head of cybersecurity, Colonel Romualdas Petkevicius, said that Russia is “not ready to wage coordinated cyber and kinetic war.”
There are cyberactivities everywhere in Ukraine, “thousands of them, but I don’t think they are very well planned,” Petkevicius told reporters.
General Didier Tisseyre, head of France’s cyberdefense force, made a similar observation about a disconnect between computer attacks and Russia’s military offensive on the ground.
“Maybe they didn’t manage to organize it the way they wanted to” and their capacities “are not as strong as we imagine,” Tisseyre said.
However, the analysis of the conflict is complicated by the fact that independent hacker groups have entered the battle, while companies such as Microsoft and Starlink have also come to Ukraine’s aid, he said.
The current conflict in cyberspace “is like a rugby world cup, where all the teams are on the field without their distinctive jerseys,” he said.
“The public is on the field too, and you have to prevent tries from being scored,” he added.
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