{"id":37101,"date":"2022-06-27T05:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-27T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/archives\/37101"},"modified":"2022-06-27T05:30:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T05:30:00","slug":"the-cyber-security-impact-of-operation-russia-by-anonymous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/?p=37101","title":{"rendered":"The cyber security impact of Operation Russia by Anonymous"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Following a huge build-up of Russian military forces on the Ukrainian border, Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24 February<\/a>. Russia\u2019s invasion has been met by condemnation from around the world. Nations have come out in support, enacting rising economic sanctions against Russia and providing equipment and resources to Ukraine<\/a>. The invasion has also strengthened ties within the European Union, as well as highlighting the importance of Nato.<\/p>\n

One response surprised many, but with hindsight it was fairly obvious what would happen. Just hours after the news of Russia\u2019s invasion, a message was posted<\/a> on Twitter by YourAnonNews<\/a>, stating: \u201cThe Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Operation Russia, or #OpRussia as it is otherwise known, has been one of the largest campaigns by Anonymous<\/a> since the group\u2019s inception nearly two decades ago. Anonymous is an online hacktivist collective that has been described as everything from a digital version of Robin Hood<\/a> to cyber terrorists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Operation Russia has quite possibly been their largest campaign to date, in terms of both scope and scale. Anonymous has previously targeted corporations, syndicates and other groups, but this is the first time they have attacked the government of a nation state.<\/p>\n

Following their announcement, Anonymous has so far hacked<\/a> the Central Bank of Russia, released<\/a> the personal details of 120,000 Russian soldiers and accessed<\/a> the Kremlin\u2019s CCTV System. It has also attacked<\/a> Russia\u2019s critical infrastructure, shutting down gas pipelines in the process,<\/span> and hacked<\/a> Russia state media organisations by replacing the original scheduled content with videos of the invasion.<\/p>\n

The actual effectiveness of these attacks, in terms of how far they were able to penetrate, is subject to debate, but what cannot be denied is that many of Russia\u2019s systems were hacked. It was claimed<\/a> that Anonymous was able to take down more than 1,500 Russian and Belarusian websites, including state media outlets and financial institutions<\/span>, in a 72-hour period.<\/p>\n

As such, the reputational harm to the Russian government has been substantial, as it was shown to not be as invincible as had been previously proclaimed. \u201cAnonymous have taken a big step, whether or not they really did any damage,\u201d says Brad King, chief technology officer at Scality<\/a>. \u201cYou put an image up on the on the screen of what is supposed to be an important government site and you\u2019ve done damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/i>Raising global awareness<\/h3>\n

One thing Operation Russia has done is raise global awareness of the dangers of being hacked. Cyber attacks no longer have purely virtual consequences, as online activities can now be linked to real-world effects.<\/p>\n

The scale and audacity of Anonymous\u2019s operation has meant that a topic that is usually covered in the technology section has once again become front-page news,\u201d says Dave Lear, lead security architect at an end-user organisation. \u201cThe wider population are beginning to appreciate the importance of robust operational security. Anonymous has brought awareness more to the forefront.<\/p>\n

\u201cCyber security has always been a business requirement, with the mandatory annual training that people have to do,\u201d he says. \u201cThey understand it more now.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Operation Russia campaign continues, questions have been raised about the possibility of similar attacks against the UK in the future. As such, many organisations are now reviewing their own cyber security posture and determining whether they are sufficiently capable of defending themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur executive board came to me and said: \u2018We\u2019ve heard this is happening in Russia. How can that affect us? What do we need to do and what do we need to be aware of?\u2019\u201d says Lear. \u201cI had to write a paper outlining what\u2019s happened, the likely outcome, what to expect and what we need to do now to be prepared in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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<\/i>Lessons to be learned<\/h3>\n

One consequence of Operation Russia is that cyber security budgets have been protected for the coming financial year. Despite the current economic uncertainty, which has seen many departmental budgets reduced, the ongoing situation has reinforced the need for organisations to have a prepared security team.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies might be cutting other stuff to save money, but they\u2019re not cutting their cyber budget,\u201d says Lear. \u201cThe cyber market, in terms of jobs, is buoyant. This is the where the money is being invested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even security professionals who are not actively looking for work are still being approached by recruitment agencies for positions in other organisations. This has also led to organisations investing in new cyber security technologies to better protect themselves against attacks. The need to protect against ransomware attacks has seen many looking into object locking<\/a> on cloud storage platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like Veeam<\/a>, Commvault<\/a> and others are pushing this idea of object lock, which is the AWS<\/a> technology to block data from being deleted for a fixed period of time,\u201d says King at Scality. \u201cThis keeps hackers from being able to corrupt backups.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current penchant for ransomware attacks to target cloud backups<\/a>, as well as their servers, has resulted in targets being unable to restore their data. As such, offline backups, such as magnetic tape<\/a>, for example, have witnessed a resurgence, so that an offline backup is available if the cloud storage backup has been compromised.<\/p>\n

The need for scheduling server updates as soon as they have been released has also been highlighted, as many of the hacks have been through poorly patched or out-of-date systems. \u201cWe do see that our customers are getting much more serious about keeping their server software up to date,\u201d says King.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been a few zero-day bugs and customers used to say, \u2018We\u2019ll look at it over the next two weeks\u2019. Now, they\u2019re coming to us and asking, \u2018How does this affect our platform?\u2019 People are certainly becoming more cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unknown nature of Anonymous has also meant that there is a renewed interest in a global identification system. \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a push to move faster on a global trusted ID for human beings,\u201d says King. \u201cBeing able to be sure that someone is who they say they are is already a key step. The most advanced is the ability to have a global identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the key questions that Operation Russia has raised is, \u2018Are we prepared and could we stop it?\u2019 Unfortunately, the answer for many will be that it is highly unlikely. No matter how robust a defence strategy may be, anyone sufficiently intent on breaking into a system will be able to do so. \u201cWe can mitigate and we can defend. It\u2019s whether or not we can prevent it,\u201d says Lear.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at Russia and the things that they\u2019ve been up to in the past. They\u2019ve had this capability for decades now: you\u2019d think they\u2019d have put some defence measures in place on their side that are being broken through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just like the WannaCry<\/a> attack<\/a> in 2017, Operation Russia has been a wake-up call for the technology sector. When the WannaCry attack swept across the internet, many organisations only had an IT team and security wasn\u2019t something they would take sufficiently seriously. In the fallout that followed, organisations started having their own cyber security complement, because they realised this could happen to them. The same is true today: Anonymous, having proven the damage that hackers can cause, has reinforced the idea that security is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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<\/i>Heightened tensions and greater risks<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe NCSC is not aware of any current specific threats to UK organisations in relation to events in and around Ukraine,\u201d says a spokesperson for the National Cyber Security Centre<\/a>. \u201cIn heightened periods of international tension, all organisations should be vigilant to the risk of cyber compromise and follow our guidance for heightened periods of cyber risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

This heightened tension has been seen in many organisations mandating additional levels of security. For example, the finance sector has responded by requiring additional confirmations of identity whenever online purchases are made.<\/p>\n

However, organisations that take the appropriate steps to reinforce their cyber security posture, by ensuring their systems are securely patched and by having a robust online and offline backup policy, will mitigate the risk of their systems being penetrated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany applications are willing to take the risk of frustrating customers with multi factor authentication for the benefit of being sure that they don\u2019t get hacked,\u201d says King.<\/p>\n

A further step in their preparedness will be ensuring that the appropriate disaster recovery plans<\/a> are in place, in the event of loss of websites or key systems, as well as ensuring that contingency plans are up to date with the latest network details.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of companies who take cyber security seriously will expect to at some point be hacked in some shape or form,\u201d says Lear. \u201cThere is so much capability out there that you cannot stop everything. What you have to do is balance between the impact and how you deal with it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following a huge build-up of Russian military forces on the Ukrainian border, Russian forces invaded Ukraine on 24 February. Russia\u2019s invasion has been met by condemnation from around the world. Nations have come out in support, enacting rising economic sanctions against Russia and providing equipment and resources to Ukraine. The invasion has also strengthened ties […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[533],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloudnewshub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}