Russia-Ukraine War as Cybersecurity Challenge

In this situation, the critical cybersecurity issue defines the ability of an anonymous group of independent hackers to hack and influence entire countries’ government digital systems. This story demonstrates perfectly that even strong countries are not immune to cyberattack threats, and data theft and manipulation can cause damage to government agencies. On the other hand, Anonymous’ actions show that Russia’s cyber defenses are far from perfect; it would seem that such important federal data and state media should be well protected, but Anonymous showed otherwise.

Consequences

Any hacker attack is, first and foremost, a reputational damage to the organization whose bases were compromised. From this point of view, Russia had a major reputational crisis since Anonymous clearly showed that the digital assets of even a strong country, positioning itself as a superpower, can be compromised relatively easily. This has implications for investment flows as well; independent investors may lose interest in companies in a country whose resources are attacked by independent hackers. Of course, the current geopolitical agenda is already hardly conducive to foreign investment in Russia, but this blow reflects even more strongly the inability of developers and cybersecurity specialists inside the country to protect such vital data. In this sense, it should also be emphasized that the loss of trust and investment interest is likely not only from the outside but also from within. Russians, who observe how an independent hacker group can hack into government data and publish it, are likely to become less trusting of domestic companies and suspend investment in them.

In addition, the loss of databases for an organization has implications for the potential development of fraud. It has been reported that many of the personal data of government employees, including mailing addresses, names, and phone numbers, have been released to the public (Pitrelli, 2022). From this perspective, criminals and fraudsters, including those not affiliated with Anonymous, could use this information for blackmail or even physical crimes. Among other things, mailboxes can be hacked, and additional strategically important information can be compromised from them, creating new conditions for reputational and organizational risks.

Nor should we ignore the fact that employees who have failed to protect an organization from cyberattacks are not highly qualified. By now, there are a considerable number of ways to combat DDoS attacks, so the inability to provide adequate protection may be an indication of their low level of professionalism. As a consequence for Russia, this scenario is likely to lead to a wave of layoffs and personnel restructuring within government agencies. Many of the cyber-attacks are not always implemented by direct hacking because there is a phenomenon of social engineering. There is no guarantee that any of the employees of Russian federal agencies and media were not exposed to such attacks and phishing, which led to the data leaks. In addition, Russia might be interested in exploring measures to maximize protection so that there are fewer such threats in the future.

Finally, the nature of the published data should be taken into account — it is information from federal agencies, so it is classified as strategically important material. Any country or terrorist organization unfriendly to Russia could use this to prepare an attack or industrial espionage. As a consequence, one would expect physical threats from data leaks, which could follow immediately after other governments or terrorists understand how such data can be used.

Official government media sites have also been hacked, which has a consequence for spreading propaganda. Some of the TV channels and online news portals have been inaccessible for a long time, making it impossible for users to get information. Moreover, as we know, not all of the media outlets were attacked, but only those that are difficult to call independent; they supported Putin’s regime. For Russians, the blocking of such portals — when truly independent journalism was not attacked — demonstrated the “true face” of state media. As a consequence, it may have affected the loss of audience and decreased trust in such platforms.

Most likely, Russian government agencies and state media are now beginning to invest more finances and resources, including talented programmers, in cybersecurity. This situation has shown how flawed previous security practices were and has created a field for the development of new capabilities. This could include exploring new measures to protect against cyberattacks, using more muscular encryption systems, and rethinking access level systems. Since it is not out of the question that social engineering may have been the likely cause of the m