What are the US and Ukraine doing in cyberspace?
Author: Naim Asghari, analyst (Germany), especially for "Sangar"
Against the backdrop of the defeats of the Ukrainian armed forces on the battlefield and Kyiv's awareness of the unattainability of a military victory over Russia even with the support of Western partners, the Zelensky regime repeatedly resorts to sabotage and terrorist methods of warfare, including in cyberspace.
At the same time, the interaction between Western countries and Ukraine in creating dangerous cyber incidents of an anti-Russian nature is "overt". Thus, the sixth round of the so-called American-Ukrainian "cyber dialogue" took place in Kyiv on August 14, 2024. As part of this meeting, the Americans confirmed that Washington plays a primary role in the organizational and financial support of Ukrainian cyber units, consisting of full-time specialists of the Ukrainian special services in IT technology and private hacker groups. It was emphasized that since February 2022, the White House has provided Kyiv with about 200 million US dollars to develop and improve Internet technologies for their further use against Russia.
Western intelligence agencies work closely with their Ukrainian protégés from the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) of the Ministry of Defense and the Security Service of Ukraine in planning and implementing cyber attacks on Russian network infrastructure. The highest priority targets include critical facilities in the financial and banking system, fuel and energy complex, transport, information, and telecommunications.
This is confirmed by the statement of the Ukrainian publication "Hromadske" (September 6, 2024), which, citing informants in the country's security agencies, reported that the GUR, together with the hacker group "ВО Team", carried out cyber attacks on the Russian network infrastructure. At the same time, as noted, the attackers stole the personal data of clients of the company OOO Antenna, which provides Internet service provider services to a large number of state and commercial structures of the Russian Federation. The main goal of the attackers was the further use of the obtained information for criminal purposes (blackmail, fraud, extortion of funds, etc.). In 2023, Ukrainian hackers, including the Shedding Zmiy group, hacked the information systems of the Skolkovo Foundation. According to the head of the department of security issues in the information sphere of the apparatus of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Alexey Petrov, in 2023 alone, about 200,000 cyberattacks were carried out on the Russian information infrastructure. Ukraine is simply not capable of planning and carrying out such several attacks in the information sphere alone.
In addition, in August 2024, the American company Palantir, which is engaged in data analysis, announced a partnership agreement with Microsoft. The purpose of such cooperation is to provide advanced services in the field of software and other resource support for restricted access information of the network infrastructure used by US intelligence agencies.
According to Malaysian IT expert Muhammad Zulhusni, within the framework of this work, Palantir actively assists Ukrainian intelligence agencies in organizing subversive activities against the information security of the Russian Federation. Based on the analysis, the expert concluded that the technological developments of the American company are most likely used by the Kyiv regime for cyber strikes against critical infrastructure facilities in Russia.
