{"id":1778990,"date":"2022-12-18T06:30:16","date_gmt":"2022-12-18T11:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778990"},"modified":"2022-12-18T07:33:50","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T12:33:50","slug":"so-what-happened-to-russias-much-vaunted-counteroffensive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/so-what-happened-to-russias-much-vaunted-counteroffensive\/","title":{"rendered":"So What Happened to Russia\u2019s Much-vaunted Counteroffensive?"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">14<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fso-what-happened-to-russias-much-vaunted-counteroffensive%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1778990&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/PutinCyber-e1671214703484.jpg\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" alt=\"image\"   style=\"display:none\"><\/div>\n<p><span>People had already begun laying flowers in front of the Ukrainian Embassy in London by the time Liam Maxwell arrived for a lunchtime meeting with Vadym Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, on Feb. 24, the day that Russia sent troops and missiles screaming over the Ukrainian border in the opening phases of the largest ground war in Europe since World War II.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As director of government transformation at Amazon Web Services, the online retail giant\u2019s cloud computing arm, Maxwell had come to see how the company could assist the Ukrainian government as it came under Russian assault. Over a lunch of borscht, they quickly settled on the idea of migrating government systems to the cloud to protect vital data and ensure that they could continue to operate regardless of the damage wrought by Russia.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cWe sat down and we went, \u2018Right, what\u2019s the first thing we need to save?\u2019\u201d said Maxwell, who previously served as the British government\u2019s national technology advisor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>On the back of an index card, they began drafting a list of the most critical government databases to preserve: a list of the country\u2019s population; the land ownership registry; the tax system; the anti-corruption and procurement systems; and the justice, education, and health care systems. As he left the embassy that day with a list of Ukraine\u2019s most precious digital assets in hand, a distinct thought passed through Maxwell\u2019s mind: \u201cDon\u2019t mess this up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Over the next several months, Amazon Web Services helped Kyiv migrate over 10 petabytes, a colossal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/10-petabytes-visualized\/\">amount<\/a> of crucial government data, from across almost 30 government ministries to the cloud and out of the reach of Russia\u2019s invading forces. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine\u2019s minister for digital transformation, would later credit the move with helping to preserve the Ukrainian government and economy.<\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cRussian missiles can\u2019t destroy the cloud,\u201d he said at an Amazon Web Services conference in Las Vegas in November.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Ahead of Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, there was widespread belief that a ground invasion would be accompanied by a cyber-doomsday that would take out much of the country\u2019s critical infrastructure. Despite some early successes, including a malware attack on an American satellite communications system used by the Ukrainian military, the anticipated digital rout of Ukraine never materialized.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Part of the answer as to why lies in the unprecedented degree of cooperation among technology companies such as Amazon, Ukraine, and Western governments that have rallied to help shore up Kyiv\u2019s cyberdefenses. <\/span><span>\u201cI\u2019ve never seen this level of public-private collaboration; it\u2019s really been remarkable,\u201d said<\/span> <span>Anne Neuberger, deputy U.S. national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, in an interview with <\/span><i><span>Foreign Policy.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><span>But it is also just one piece of the puzzle. <\/span><span>One reason the feared cyber-Armageddon never came to be is that the flawed assumptions that underpinned the opening moves of the Russian invasion\u2014namely, that Kyiv would fold within a matter of days\u2014appear to have extended to their cyberoperations as well. \u201cAkin to the military invasion, it appears the Russians expected to be quickly successful and, as such, hadn\u2019t planned for a more extensive, lengthy\u2014and, frankly, integrated\u2014cyberoperation,\u201d Neuberger said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Still, while the battlefields of eastern Ukraine have increasingly come to resemble the trenches of World War I, the first world cyberwar, as Fedorov has dubbed it, is being closely studied by cybersecurity experts and government officials seeking to gain a glimpse into the future of cyberconflict.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>As Russian forces moved in to occupy Ukrainian territory in the early stages of the war, so-called hunt teams deployed by cybersecurity firm Mandiant <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/russia-ukraine-cyberattacks-mandiant\/\">watched<\/a> as regional offices or data centers belonging to government agencies were overrun by Russian troops who used those networks to launch cyberattacks on other computers within the network in Ukrainian-held territory. <\/span><span>Similarly, in the hours just before the start of the war, Russian hackers <a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2022\/05\/10\/1051973\/russia-hack-viasat-satellite-ukraine-invasion\/#:~:text=The%20attack%2C%20on%20February%2024,effectively%20destroyed%20in%20this%20way.\">succeeded<\/a> in temporarily crippling the Ukrainian military\u2019s communications by attacking modems and routers that form part of the U.S.-based Viasat\u2019s European satellite network. The attack also affected tens of thousands of customers in Europe, <a href=\"https:\/\/cybernews.com\/news\/viasat-hack-impacted-french-critical-services\/\">including<\/a> the French emergency services.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cClearly, there is some battlefield coordination with cyberunits to hijack those systems,\u201d said Ron Bushar, head of government solutions at Mandiant. He said that it was unclear whether cyberunits were embedded with Russian ground forces or troops with basic computing skills were able to plug some kind of device into the Ukrainian systems that were then accessed remotely by hackers in Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While Moscow\u2019s failures on the battlefield may have prompted NATO allies to <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2022\/06\/07\/ukraine-nato-allies-rethinking-russia-military-prowess\/\"><span>reassess<\/span><\/a><span> Russia\u2019s military prowess, Bushar said it\u2019s too soon to count Russia out as a formidable cyberpower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI would never discount Russia\u2019s ability, especially on the foreign intelligence side of the house, to execute some frankly scary technologies.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>From February through October of this year, Mandiant has tracked 16 unique destructive or disruptive attacks on Ukrainian entities that it has been supporting, according to data provided by the company, which noted that attacks are still ongoing. <\/span><span>And while Russia has more often been the perpetrator than the victim of cyberattacks, a wartime scenario means it also has to maintain its own cyberdefenses\u2014without the support from allies and the private sector that Ukraine has benefited from.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cIn the physical world, for a military force to be on the highest alert for a year is very difficult,\u201d said <\/span><span>Sergey Shykevich, threat intelligence group manager at cybersecurity firm Check Point. \u201cIn cyberwarfare it\u2019s the same\u2014for defense, it\u2019s not easy.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Cyberoperations fall into two broad categories: intelligence gathering and offensive attacks. Once you\u2019ve breached a computer system, you can either quietly hunker down and listen in, or wreck the place. In the case of the former, Russia\u2019s foreign intelligence service, the SVR, is regarded as highly sophisticated. The 2020 hack of the Texas-based software company SolarWinds succeeded in compromising about 100 companies, including Microsoft and Intel, and at least nine government agencies including the Pentagon, the Treasury, and the Department of Energy. Proceeding from eavesdropping to jaw-dropping is where Moscow starts to stumble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cRussia is really immature from the standpoint of incorporating what they know from the intelligence and subversion that they\u2019re very skilled at in the cyberdomain,\u201d said Gavin Wilde, an expert on Russia\u2019s cybercapabilities with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cTranslating that into military objectives is a very different ballgame,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>An artillery tube can be fired over and over (until it wears out). Each digital weapon can only be deployed once. After it has been exposed and a fix has been developed, its potency is spent. <\/span><span>\u201cIt gets incrementally harder to get into these environments as you continue to attack them,\u201d Bushar said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While Russia has launched devastating cyberattacks on Ukraine\u2019s energy grid in the past, plunging more than 200,000 homes into darkness in a highly sophisticated attack in 2015, Moscow appears to have come to the conclusion that lobbing missiles at the country\u2019s electrical substations can cause more chaos. The attacks have already destroyed half of the country\u2019s energy infrastructure, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.voanews.com\/a\/un-half-of-ukraine-energy-infrastructure-destroyed-by-russian-attacks\/6874897.html\">according<\/a> to the United Nations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>Russia\u2019s own need for critical Ukrainian infrastructure for its military operations on the ground, particularly in the early days of the conflict, may have contributed to its cyberwarriors holding back more than they might have, according to Shykevich. \u201cRussian forces needed the electricity, the water supply, because, as we all know, there are a lot of problems in the logistics of the Russian army,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>One advantage for Ukraine of having regularly come under Russian cyberattack over the past several years is that it has given Ukrainians time and expertise to hone their defenses ahead of the assault that began in February. One week before the Russian invasion, Ukraine\u2019s parliament passed a law allowing government agencies to use cloud-based services to store data, which paved the way for the mass migration of critical information on Amazon\u2019s servers in the early days of the war. There are also echoes of the warring parties\u2019 respective strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield playing out in the cyber-realm. Without a stand-alone cybercommand, coordination of Russia\u2019s cyberoperations is <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/cepa.org\/comprehensive-reports\/russian-cyberwarfare-unpacking-the-kremlins-capabilities\/\"><span>run out of<\/span><\/a><span> the presidential administration, undermining its ability to respond quickly to the realities of the conflict.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cThe Ukrainians have shown the value of being able to be nimble in their strategic communications, their information operations, and their cyberdefenses,\u201d Wilde said. \u201cThat mirrors what I think is happening on the kinetic battlefield as well.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The other pillar of Ukraine\u2019s digital success has been the remarkable coordination between both private technology companies and foreign governments to aid Kyiv\u2019s cyberdefenses. Unlike in conventional warfare, where states have a near-monopoly on the use of force, the cyber-realm is dominated by the private sector, giving larger companies a unique overview. \u201cIn a certain sense, Microsoft is the largest signals intelligence agency in the world,\u201d Wilde said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The absence so far of a doomsday attack by Russia on Ukraine or its Western allies does not mean they can rest easy, experts say. In fact, they may need to be even more alert in the months to come, as the region\u2019s punishing winter potentially makes conventional warfare more challenging. <\/span><span>\u201cUnfortunately, I think there is much more to come,\u201d Shykevich said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The risk of digital attacks spilling beyond Ukraine\u2019s borders is also increasing. Cyberattacks on Latvia have gone up 30 percent since the start of the Ukraine invasion, a senior official of the country\u2019s <\/span><span>Computer Emergency Readiness Team said in an <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/therecord.media\/latvias-cyberspace-faces-new-challenges-amid-war-in-ukraine\/\"><span>interview<\/span><\/a><span> with cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, and the country has been a frequent target of Russian hacktivist groups such as Killnet. In a <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.microsoft.com\/on-the-issues\/2022\/12\/03\/preparing-russian-cyber-offensive-ukraine\/\"><span>report<\/span><\/a><span> earlier this month, Microsoft said Russian military intelligence had also carried out a ransomware-style attack on Ukraine\u2019s neighbor and ally Poland, pointing to the attack as a possible signal of things to come.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201c<\/span><span>This was the first war-related cyberattack against entities outside of Ukraine since the Viasat KA-SAT attack at the start of the invasion,\u201d Microsoft said. \u201cWe believe these recent trends suggest that the world should be prepared for several lines of potential Russian attack in the digital domain over the course of this winter.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>While the United States has not observed any intelligence that Russia plans to ramp up its offensive cyberoperations, neither Ukraine nor its Western partners are letting their guards down. \u201c<\/span><span>We still believe\u2014given its winter, given its energy systems, given there\u2019s an ongoing complex crisis situation\u2014we must ultimately prepare for any scenario,\u201d Neuberger said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The emerging lessons from the war in Ukraine underscore the difficulty of trying to wage a conventional battle alongside a digital one.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u201cI think that tells you a lot about the limitations of cyberwarfare, and the idea that this is going to be a critical part of every war going forward was a misguided analysis,\u201d said <\/span><span>Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the think tank Silverado Policy Accelerator.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People had already begun laying flowers in front of the Ukrainian Embassy in London by the time Liam Maxwell arrived for a lunchtime meeting with Vadym Prystaiko, the Ukrainian ambassador<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1778993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[5458,10006,9694,10005,3819,9987],"class_list":["post-1778990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report","tag-bongino","tag-counteroffensive","tag-happened","tag-much-vaunted","tag-report","tag-russias"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1778990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1778990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1778993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1778990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1778990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1778990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}