Theyveshut down electricity in Ukraineandmeddled in elections in the U.S.and elsewhere.
Who are these operators, why are they so skilled, and what are they up to?
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The hacker was after military secrets, downloading documents with important keywords such as nuclear.
The 1990s also saw the arrest ofVladimir Levin, a computer operator in St. Petersburg.
And Russian hackers defaced U.S. websites during theKosovo conflict, portending Russias extensive use of disruptive and damaging cyberattacks.
The2015 cyberattack on three of Ukraines regional power distribution companiesknocked out power to almost a quarter-million people.
Ukraineblamed the attacks on Russia.
The attackers used avariety of techniquesand adapted to the targets they faced.
They usedspearphishingemail messages to gain initial access to systems.
They installed BlackEnergy malware to establish remote control over the infected devices.
They harvested credentials to move through the networks.
They developed custom malicious firmware to render system control devices inoperable.
They hijacked theSupervisory Control and Data Acquisitionsystem to open circuit breakers in substations.
They used KillDisk malware to erase the master boot record of affected systems.
The Russiansreturned in 2016with more advanced tools to take down a major artery of Ukraines power grid.
Russia is believed to have also invaded energy companies in the U.S., including those operatingnuclear power plants.
The top U.S. school ranked 13th.
Who are these Russian cyberwarriors?
Russia employs cyberwarriors within its military andintelligence services.
Both groups have been implicated in hundreds of cyberoperations over the past decade, including U.S. election hacking.
Russiarecruits cyberwarriorsfrom its colleges, but also from the cybersecurity and cybercrime sectors.
Bogachev is said to work under the supervision of a special unit of the FSB.
Many seemingly independent patriotic hackers operate on Russias behalf.
At the very least, the Russian government condones, even encourages, these hackers.
He noted that a small force of hackers is stronger than the multi-thousand force of the current armed forces.
The bad news is that many organizations do not take those steps.
Further, hackers find new vulnerabilities in devices and exploit the weakest link of all humans.
