Russian cyberattacks targeting media and institutions in Ukraine
Cyberattacks from Russian military intelligence service have targeted institutions and media organisations in Ukraine. Microsoft says it has disrupted the attacks and that among targets were also US government institutions and think tanks.
“We recently observed attacks targeting Ukrainian entities from Strontium, a Russian GRU-connected (military intelligence service) actor we have tracked for years{, the company said in a blog adding that it has been able to disrupt some of Strontium’s attacks on targets in Ukraine. Microsoft says the Strontium attacks are just a small part of the activity seen in Ukraine.
|”We have observed nearly all of Russia’s nation-state actors engaged in the ongoing full-scale offensive against Ukraine’s government and critical infrastructure.”
The company says it has obtained a court order authorizing it to take control of seven internet domains Strontium was using to conduct these attacks.
“We have since re-directed these domains to a sinkhole controlled by Microsoft, enabling us to mitigate Strontium’s current use of these domains and enable victim notifications.”
“We believe Strontium was attempting to establish long-term access to the systems of its targets, provide tactical support for the physical invasion and exfiltrate sensitive information. We have notified Ukraine’s government about the activity we detected and the action we’ve taken.”
Microsoft says it has established a legal process that enables us to obtain rapid court decisions for this work. Prior to this week, we had taken action through this process 15 times to seize control of more than 100 Strontium controlled domains”, the company said.
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