If there’s one thing we learned in this months-long run of the Ukraine-Russia war, it is that Russian troops are not only demoralized but have fallen short of expectations. Moreover, many of the factors of their loss could be attributed to poor military leadership compared to Ukraine’s highly streamlined directives from their generals.

Nonetheless, Russia continues to attack Ukrainians in more ways than the battle on the borders. One way they’re doing that is by cyber warfare.

Russia has been using highly sophisticated cyber-attacks to achieve its strategic objectives in Ukraine. According to reports, the Russia-affiliated hacker group “Sandworm” has conducted multiple successful hacking campaigns targeting Ukrainian government institutions, military networks, and critical infrastructure such as the electricity grid. For example, in April 2016, Sandworm deployed a powerful malware dubbed “Industroyer2” to attack Ukraine’s power grid resulting in an extended blackout across a large country area.

Cyber Security
(Source: NARA)

“Sandworm, which Microsoft calls Iridium, is an arm of the Russian military intelligence unit known as the GRU, according to the U.S. government. It shut off power in parts of Ukraine in 2015. In 2017, it unleashed the NotPetya malware in a global attack that did an estimated $10 billion worth of damage. And this fall, Sandworm’s ransomware known as “Prestige” targeted transportation and related logistics industries.