Analysts criticize the IMF’s assessment of the Russian economy

Director of Cyber ​​Security at the US National Security Agency Rob Joyce stated that during the war in Ukraine, the Russians did not demonstrate “the ability to use complex things with sophistication” both in physical space and in the cyber arena.

Speaking to a research audience in Washington, he said that to gather intelligence for Russia, they use tried and tested techniques that have already proven themselves.

“Creative things are happening. We’re seeing Russian hackers hack into public webcams to monitor aid convoys and trains. They’re also hacking web cams in city squares that are accessible to the Internet and using them to monitor coffee “by streetlights or behind surveillance cameras, they see the road they want to follow. These things go on,” Joyce said during a meeting at the US Center for Strategic and International Studies.

An official of the intelligence agency emphasized that Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine are currently “hot” and continue constantly: “What is hot today and still ongoing are cyberattacks on Ukrainian interests – financial, governmental, personal, individual, business. They are simply trying to harm. There a lot of intelligence, it’s expected that during an ongoing war they’ll be gathering intelligence.”

The biggest goals of cyber attacks are defensive

According to the official, in the US, the most cyber activity on the part of the Russians is observed in the defense industry.

“If you look at the US, the biggest (cyber) pressure is on the defense-industrial base, logistics transport companies transported lethal weapons, and they are under daily pressure from the Russians. Again, it’s very similar that intelligence wants to understand what exactly the West is supplying, what the US is supporting, what we’re doing,” said the director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency.

He spoke about the difficulties faced by many American companies that did business in Ukraine or Russia.

Experience in Ukraine can help prepare for problems in Asia

Joyce recommends companies with business in China or Taiwan to take advantage of Ukrainian experience and start preparing for possible challenges today.

“We had many companies that had to make difficult decisions and act quickly during the invasion (into Ukraine – ed.). They had people in Ukraine who were in the war zone, and they had to figure out how to get them out. They had Russian or Ukrainian sysadmins, and it was necessary to decide what rights these people could have. They had network segments in Russia or Ukraine, and they had to decide how to disconnect them. They had to think about how to leave their Russian business and what the consequences would be,” says Joyce.

According to him, now is the time to analyze the situation and project it for the future and in another part of the world.

“Think if instead of the words “Russia and Ukraine” you write “China and Taiwan”, how will the situation change? It’s a really complicated problem, and you don’t want to start this planning a week before an invasion, when the White House is already saying “it’s coming.” It is better to do it now, reduce the risks and make a decision in advance”, – Roy Joyce analyzes.

Regarding the protection of Ukrainian cyberspace, the American official does not hide that many lessons have been learned from how the Ukrainians defended themselves. Although with the help of the American government.

“A lot of lessons can be learned from how Ukrainians defended themselves. They entered a world where you have to be resilient. And they are very resilient. How did they do it? Yes, they practiced for years. They survived the threat of the Petya virus, cyber attacks on the power grid and so on. They kept improving their craft and it got to the point where, you know, Ukrainian sysadmins already knew they needed backups, and when they got a virus that destroyed data, they just shrugged, wiped the computer, rebooted everything from a backup copy, and continued to work,” says the director of cyber security at the NSA.

Joyce adds that after the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian cyberspace received support from the US government, “they were given resources, a lot of pro bono industry support, to make them much more difficult targets.”

Ukrainian data received protection in Europe and the USA

He calls the transfer of servers under the European cloud one of the biggest achievements in cyber defense of Ukraine.

“The benefit of being in this cloud is that now you’ve gone from two people maintaining and managing your servers to a team of hundreds or thousands of people who have threat intelligence on that server. They’ve benefited from having these companies are used by the US National Intelligence Service, which knows about Russian threats from foreign intelligence,” said Roy Joyce.

“I would not look for those two sysadmins who worked with servers in Ukraine to be able to help them directly. But this cloud environment gave them a much more stable space. I really believe that the way to the future lies in the cloud,” said the director of cybersecurity at the NSA.

The National Security Agency of the United States is one of the intelligence agencies of the American government, which is responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign intelligence information, and for the protection of information systems and computer networks of the country’s government.