INTERVIEW: Anti-Russia cyberwar now orchestrated by Ukraine

MOSCOW, Jun 14 (PRIME) -- The only difference of the cyberwar against Russia from similar attacks on the Internet is that it is coordinated by the Ukrainian government, antivirus maker Kasperksy’s chief expert Sergei Golovanov told PRIME in an interview on the eve of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“It is natural that military conflicts influence the Internet conflicts with all the fallout. The only thing is that after February 24 we saw something new – one of the parties said officially that an IT army was being formed, it invited all who wanted to participate and set the targets for attacks regularly. We see state coordination at the level of the Digital Transformation Ministry of Ukraine,” Golovanov said.

Other DDoS attacks, and mailouts of malware are not new and targeted not only Russia -- there were conflicts, for example, between Pakistan and India, India and China, China and Japan, the expert said.

“What happened on February 24? Hackers wanted to hurt, not to steal anything, neither money nor bases – but to destroy everything. The perpetrators have no profit in it. But before destroying anything, they copied it, and there were lots of leaks on the Internet after that. This is how the hackers demonstrated their success,” he said.

Phone fraudsters also joined the game and switched fully to physiological abuse. “After February 24, the share of cyber incidents related to politics increased but still remained small. All the rest, the bulk of the attacks, still have the aim to make money,” Golovanov added.

He also said that the number of the hackers siding with Russia after the start of the special operation is smaller than those backing Ukraine because there are fewer Russian-speaking specialists in the information security industry than English-speaking ones.

According to Golovanov, every second allegedly successful attack is a fake.

Since April, hackers have been no longer interested in the cards issued by Russian banks because they are useless abroad. “Now the possibilities for card fraud are only in Russia,” he said.

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