Responding to Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov on Twitter, SpaceX founder Elon Musk stated on Saturday that the company’s Starlink satellite broadband service is now ‘operational in Ukraine, with more terminals on the way’.
Ukraine conflict
The USA announces broad restrictions on technological exports to Russia
In response to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, the USA announced financial sanctions and export controls aiming to ‘choke off Russia’s import of technological goods’. The export controls aim not only to impact Russian imports of technology for the defense, aviation and maritime sectors, but also to impose restrictions on access to semiconductors, telecommunication, encryption security, lasers, and sensors. The measures will halt direct exports from the USA to Russia, and will also affect technological products that are manufactured outside the USA but use American equipment or technology (e.g. machinery, software or blueprints).
The White House estimates that ‘severe and sustained controls will cut off Russia’s access to cutting edge technology, contributing to undermine Putin’s ability to project power.’ Among analysts, views are split on the impact of the export restrictions. While some believe that the measure will have ‘a real, significant impact on these sectors of the Russian economy for many years’, others remarked that Russia ‘is not a significant direct consumer of chips or of information technology equipment.’
Ukraine calls for volunteer hackers to protect its critical infrastructure
The Ukrainian government is reportedly looking for volunteers from the country’s hacker underground to help defend the key infrastructure and perform cyber-surveillance missions against Russian forces.
The call came via a post by Yegor Aushev, co-founder of a cybersecurity firm in Kyiv which has worked with the Ukraine’s government on the defence of critical infrastructure. Aushev claims he wrote the post at the request of a senior Defense Ministry official who called him on Thursday, 24 February.
The post invites hackers and cybersecurity specialists to apply using Google Docs, specifying their specialisations and professional references. According to the post, the volunteers would be organised into two groups: defence and offensive cyber forces.
Russian government plans to restrict access to Facebook
The Russian government has announced through its internet regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, that it will begin to partially restrict access to Facebook. The report further stated that Russia decided to implement the measures after Facebook, through its parent company Meta, put its own restrictions on four Russian state-linked media outlets: the television network Zvezda, the news agency RIA Novosti, and the websites Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. The measure to restrict access to Facebook has raised concerns for freedom of expression in these times since ‘Ordinary Russians are using Meta’s apps to express themselves and organize for action.’
Biden presented with options for cyberattacks against Russia
US President Joe Biden has been presented with a variety of possibilities for disrupting Russia’s capacity to sustain military operations in Ukraine.
According to intelligence officials who spoke to NBC News, possibilities include interrupting internet access throughout Russia, cutting off power, and tampering with railroad switches.
Officials are debating the legal authorities under which the attacks would take place — whether they would be covert action or clandestine military activity. According to Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, ‘This report is wildly off base and does not reflect what is actually being discussed in any shape or form’.
Georgia Tech reports internet outages in Ukraine
Internet disruptions centred around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, close to the Russian border, were reported by the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis project at Georgia Tech. The reports cite partial outages beginning shortly before midnight on 23 February and extending into the morning of 24 February. There are concerns that disruptions could signal deliberate intent to limit the flow of information from the region.
UK claims Russian channel RT is tool of Kremlin disinformation
The UK accused Russian news channel RT on Wednesday 23 rd of being a tool of a Kremlin disinformation campaign. Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries expressed concerns that RT would seek to spread “harmful disinformation” about the Russia-Ukraine crisis. Dorries also requested Ofcom, the state media regulator to take action if needed after Russia recognised two rebel regions of eastern Ukraine. Ofcom replied recognising the serious nature of the crisis in Ukraine and expressed that they have been keeping the situation under close review. However, they did not issue a specific response regarding RT. On the other hand, Russian officials claimed that RT is not one-sided propaganda, but rather represents a way for Moscow to compete with the dominance of global media companies based in the United States and Britain.
Anonymous claims responsibility for distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on Russian state news site
The hacking group known as Anonymous claimed responsibility for cyberattacks that briefly shut down Russian government websites. The attacks were in retaliation for the Ukraine invasion, hackers said. Russia’s state news site RT confirmed the malicious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. The news agency stated that they had ‘been able to withstand the attack’.
Ukraine organisations hit by new (data) wiper malware
The malware attack was first noted by ESET, which called the malware ‘HermeticWiper’, and later confirmed by Symantec. According to ESET, the mechanism of attack was built at least six weeks ago. According to Symantec, targets have included finance and government contractors in Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. Neither ESET or Symantec made an attribution of the attack.
Cyberattack on Ukrainian government websites and banks
A significant distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack was launched against several Ukrainian governmental and banking websites. PrivatBank, Ukraine’s largest commercial bank, and Oschadbank, Ukraine’s State Savings Bank, reportedly experienced outages.
Some of the impacted information systems are unavailable or only operate intermittently. This is due to traffic being redirected to a different provider in order to reduce harm. In an effort to fight the attacks, Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, as well as other subjects of the national cybersecurity system, are gathering and analysing data.