The chief technology officer of $US50 billion ($67 billion) cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike has warned that Russia is still likely to launch large-scale cyberattacks against the West in response to sanctions and accusations of war crimes. Although doomsday predictions about Russian retaliation have so far proved wide of the mark, Australian Mike Sentonas said cyberwarfare had still played a major role in the campaign, starting with early attempts by Moscow to destabilise its target Ukraine. “In the lead up to having boots on ground, we were seeing a really, really concerning and devastating psychological approach,” Mr Sentonas said. This included mass text message campaigns designed to provoke a run on Ukraine’s banks, and fake alerts of missile strikes. This has been followed up with denial of service attacks to disrupt key services, and the frequent use of wiper malware that seeks to erase the hard drives of computers it infects. He said ransomware attacks had also become more frequent as the bite of sanctions were felt in Russia.
Full story : ‘The big one is coming’: tech giant’s stark Russia warning.
