According to Carhart, one of the reasons cyber hasn't played a bigger role in the war is because Russia wasn't prepared for it. It is unsurprising that we see that in the cyber domain.
According to experts, Ukraine has received support from the international community since the war started, and it has been working on its cyber defenses for years. The rise of the IT Army, a group of hacktivists, showed that war in the future can be fought by hacktivists.
In addition to the usual corporations, hospitals, and schools, government agencies in Costa Rica, Montenegro, and Albania were also affected by the attacks. The Costa Rica government declared a national emergency after the attack. The Albanian government expelled Iranian diplomats after a destructive cyberattack.
Allan Liska, a researcher at Recorded Future, said that these types of attacks were at an all-time high in 2022.
Ransomware is more than just a technical problem. He says there are real world implications. In the past, the UK's National Health System was disrupted and an estimated 230,000 computers were affected.
It is not all bad news on the subject. According to Liska, there are some early signs that point to the demise of the ransomware-as- a-service model. Something bad happens to a gang when they get too large, he said.
The REvil and DarkSide/BlackMatter groups were hit by governments and the LockBit crew suffered the leak of its internal chats, among other things.
"We are seeing a lot of the affiliates deciding that maybe I don't want to be part of a big ransomware group, because they all have targets on their back, which means that I might have a target on my back, and I just want to carry out my cyber crime,"
All Rights Reserved © 2024
