As the noise of the fighting nears Kiev and Ukraine counts its death toll, another battle between Russians and Ukrainians is unfolding on the cyber front.
A little before the start of the "special military operation" decided by Vladimir Putin, Thursday, February 24, Russia began to bombard Ukrainian targets with viruses and other computer attacks.
A computer eraser at work
“There has never been such a variety of cyber operations in a single conflict, which underlines how important this weapon has become in modern warfare,” notes Gérôme Billois, cybersecurity expert at consulting firm Wavestone, contacted by France 24.
The most destructive began in the night from Wednesday to Thursday, shortly before the start of the offensive.
A brand new malware has been activated "on hundreds of machines in Ukraine", said Jean-Ian Boutin, head of research at ESET, the computer security firm which discovered this virus, interviewed by the press agency. PA.
It is malware of the "wiper" type ("eraser") "which attacks the content of computers to erase them", specifies Benoît Grunemwald, cybersecurity expert for ESET France, contacted by France 24.
It is more sophisticated than most other "wipers" because "it spreads on demand, and not automatically", specifies Benoît Grunemwald.
In other words, it is malware that allows precise strikes "avoiding the risk of collateral damage", summarizes this specialist.
ESET did not want to specify which structures were affected, but it would be "large organizations", said Jean-Ian Boutin.
"Subcontractors of the Ukrainian government in Latvia and Lithuania", as well as at least a bank and a Ukrainian aviation company would be among the victims, for its part noted the computer software publisher Symantec, which also found traces of this "wiper".
It does not just corrupt data on hard drives.
"It attacks the boot system of the hard disk, which means that it even prevents it from starting", underlines Gérôme Billois.
The attack is therefore clearly intended to paralyze the functioning of the institutions and companies targeted, adds the specialist.
In parallel to this destructive operation, another wave of assaults, which began earlier on Wednesday, aimed to make banking and government sites inaccessible.
Attacks that have a little air of déjà vu since they use the same process – DDoS (denial of service attacks, consisting of sending repeated requests to overload the servers of the targeted sites) – as another attack launched against banking and institutional sites in mid-January.
Cyberresistance is getting organized
Ukrainians also receive "misleading text messages which contribute to the massive disinformation campaign on the ongoing clashes", underlines David Grout, technical director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa of Mandiant, one of the main American computer security companies, contacted by France 24. For him, "the tools used are certainly multiple, but the objective is clearly to lose confidence, to scare and to blow a wind of panic on the populations".
But the Ukrainians are not standing idly by in the face of these various computer attacks.
It is even an unprecedented aspect of this conflict since President Volodymyr Zelensky has "called for the formation of cyber resistance", underlines Gérôme Billois.
He has, in fact, asked all Ukrainians who have skills in the field to take part in defense actions against Russian computer attacks.
He also asked them to be ready to go cyber-spy on the adversary.
This appeal to Ukrainian hackers is not surprising.
"Ukraine is renowned in the world of cybersecurity. The country is best known for hosting some of the most effective cybercrime groups. We will see if they will act for the national cause", notes Gérôme Billois.
Ukrainians have one advantage: experience.
The country "has been for years a laboratory where Russian hackers test their cyberweapons", recalls this Wavestone specialist.
It was first in Ukraine that Russia deployed in 2017 one of the most famous ransomware – NotPetya – which ended up infecting millions of computers around the world.
The Russians are also suspected of being behind several computer attacks that have targeted Ukrainian power plants since 2015. "The Ukrainians therefore know Russian procedures and have learned to defend themselves," concludes Gérôme Billois.
Cyber threat to the West?
And the rest of the world?
The risk of seeing Russia draw the weapon of cyberattacks to "punish" the West for its support for Ukraine and for the sanctions imposed on Moscow is taken very seriously.
US President Joe Biden spoke very officially about this threat, assuring that the United States was “ready to respond if Russian cyberattacks targeted Russian critical companies and infrastructure”.
Stéphane Boujnah, the boss of the European stock exchange operator Euronext, expects "attacks of an unprecedented scale" and recommends, in particular, to print the most sensitive documents so that they do not exist only on computer where they could be hacked.
"Banks and European authorities have all increased their level of alert in order to be ready for any eventuality", noted David Grout, of Mandiant.
"This is not just a problem for Ukraine. We believe that after attacking the last US and French elections, hacking into Olympic bodies, without having to pay the consequences, Russian cybercriminals have confidence in attacking Western targets," added Sandra Joyce, Vice President of Mandiant.
"The question is not whether the Russians will use cyberattacks against the West, but when and in what forms," said Gerôme Billois.
They can, at first, decide to send warnings "by attacking, for example, television channels in order to make media noise", notes this expert.
Or they can opt for heavy artillery.
The options are many, but it should never be forgotten that all the great powers in cyberspace – and Russia is one of them – "have a reserve of 'zero-day' flaws, that is to say vulnerabilities of which no one is aware and for which there is no patch yet", summarizes Gérôme Billois.
These are kinds of vaccine-free viruses that states keep for use as a last resort.
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