How Ukraine's Internet Can Fend Off Russian Attacks

The internet shuddered as Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine on February 24. The northeastern Kharkiv region was a target of the Russian invasion and so the major Ukrainian internet service provider was temporarily knocked out. According to data from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA), there were small disruptions throughout the week, even as the network came back online the following day. The Russian-occupied regions of Luhansk and Donetsk experienced drops in internet service.

Since the beginning of the conflict, there have been concerns that Russia-backed hackers might attempt to take down the internet in Ukraine in the same way they took down the power grid in 2015. Russia's cyber army has been bombarding government websites with spurious traffic in order to take them offline. Ukrainian cyber warriors have retaliated in kind. Russia's chances of shutting down the internet against Ukraine are low despite what happened to Triolan.

Internet shutdowns are enacted by governments with the ability to order internet service providers to stop providing internet access. It is much harder to stage a shutdown as an external attacker. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at internet measurement company Kentik, says that an attack that could take down a website might have a harder time. If it was easy, they would have done it by now.

It is not impossible, after all, an American hacker took down North Korea's server earlier this year. Ukraine has been battle-hardened by its battles with Russia and is much better prepared than North Korea. The fact that any attacker would be presented with a lot of targets is more important. Europe's internet backbone is deeply connected with Ukraine's size and geographic position. According to The New York Times, the Ukrainian Internet Association says that the country boasted over 4,900 internet service providers as of December 2021.

In the past few years, the internet has served it well due to market dynamics, according to a professor in digital media and society at Dublin City University. Lokot says that having a variety of traffic exchange points leads to a more reliable system. Russia's internet is dominated by a few state-controlled operators and the government is working to separate from the global internet through a kill switch.

Beyond the sheer number of providers, Ukraine's resilience extends. If cyberattacks don't work to take down an internet service provider, a Russian military might decide to cut off the internet in the country. There is a possibility that Russian bombs damaged the infrastructure of Triolan in Kharkiv. It's not clear if a more methodical targeting of network equipment would result in a total internet black out. In Ukraine's crowded internet service provider market, providers have adapted to be fleet-footed and address even the smallest technical issues quickly and effectively.