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Cybersecurity In-Depth



Edge Articles

4 MIN READ

The Edge



RUSSIA'S WAR IN UKRAINE SHOWS CYBERATTACKS CAN BE WAR CRIMES

Ukraine's head of cybersecurity Victor Zhora says the world needs "efficient
legal instruments to confront cyber terrorism."
Andrada Fiscutean
Contributing Writer, Dark Reading
May 26, 2023
Source: Yuliia Burlachenko via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


Russia's cyberattacks against Ukrainian civilian and critical infrastructure has
shown what it looks like when cyberattacks are part of warfare. What remains to
be seen is whether the world will treat them as war crimes.



"For too long, the world has been considering cyber terrorism as something
unrealistic, too sci-fi-ish, and cyber weapons as not posing any serious
threat," says Victor Zhora, deputy chairman and chief digital transformation at
the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine
(SSSCIP). "Russia's war against Ukraine has proven such thinking wrong."

According to SSSCIP research and military experts, the war is a hybrid one, with
"clear correlations between cyberattacks, kinetic and information attacks,"
Zhora says. For example, the energy sector has been targeted by both
cyberattacks and missile attacks since the start of the invasion.



Public authorities and local governments, which "operate for civilians' benefit
and are vital for the country," are the most targeted, Zhora says. The CERT-UA
(Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine) last year manually processed 2,194
incidents, with only 308 specifically aimed at the security and defense sector.
The situation has remained similar this year — between January and April,
CERT-UA handled 701 incidents, with only 39 of them directed at the security and
defense sector.



It's not just critical infrastructure that is under attack. Zhora says the
Russians have also deployed massive campaigns aimed at harvesting Ukrainian
citizens' personal data, but that the purpose of those activities remains
unclear to him.


CYBERATTACKS AS WAR CRIMES

The events of the past year and a half have prompted Zhora and other
cybersecurity experts to gather evidence of cyberattacks against civilian and
critical infrastructure, with the hope of convincing the International Criminal
Court (ICC) in The Hague to classify those as war crimes.

"We can see that cyberattacks are a part of [R]ussia's 'hybrid' warfare," Zhora
said during WithSecure's The Sphere event this week in Helsinki. "So, the ICC
should properly recognize them as a component of the [R]ussian war machine."



According to him, this action, while unprecedented, is necessary.

"When the global democratic community faced the immediate threat, it found
itself lacking efficient legal instruments to confront cyber terrorism and
cyberattacks as war crimes," he said. "Now we need to create such instruments
from scratch."

Zhora demands effective mechanisms to punish cyber attacks, although he
recognizes that the road to achieving that goal is challenging.

"Such decisions as recognizing that a certain country is a cyber terrorist and
needs to be held accountable require strong political will," he said. "Such
will, in turn, depends on how much national governments and international
institutions are aware of the risks."

The plan to hand evidence to the ICC in The Hague was first mentioned by Illia
Vitiuk, the head of the Department of Cyber and Information Security at Security
Service of Ukraine, in April during the RSA Conference in San Francisco.

The idea of classifying cyber attacks against civilian infrastructure as war
crimes is gaining traction in international policy circles. Foreign policy
analyst Jessica Berlin, who has traveled to Ukraine on several occasions since
the full-scale invasion started, says that rules and classifications should be
adjusted when we talk about cyber warfare.

"We live in unprecedented times," Berlin says. "There's a lot that's happening
right now that no one was prepared for. And if we try to solve the problems we
face with our old rulebook, we won't be able to solve them."


BOOSTING INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AT HOME

Meanwhile, Ukraine is working toward further strengthening its legislation
around cybersecurity, asking all public and private entities that own critical
infrastructure to conduct security audits and offer detailed explanations
concerning their adherence to the specified requirements. Furthermore, it's
demanding that owners of critical infrastructure appoint security experts who
will work closely with state agencies to prevent, detect, and respond to
cyberattacks.

These provisions are part of Bill No. 8087, which will undergo a second reading
within the Parliament of Ukraine in the coming months. The bill was voted in
during the first reading in January this year, and a final vote is expected
soon.

This legislation is "very important" and "it is necessary to be adopted very
soon," as it will increase the country's cyber defense based on the lessons
learned since the beginning of the war with Russia, said Zhora.

The bill, which was in the works even before the full-scale invasion that
started on Feb. 24, 2022, seeks to strengthen the security of Ukraine's critical
infrastructure. Simultaneously, it aims to enhance the exchange of information
regarding cybersecurity incidents, to introduce "a new system of state control
over the technical protection of information," and to "create a system of cyber
defence units in state authorities," according to Ukrainian law firm Asters,
which helped to draft it.

Ukraine's head of cybersecurity added that the knowledge gathered by Ukraine is
shared with its partners within the cybersecurity community, which are also
increasingly targeted and face their own set of challenges.

"We share our experience and know-how with the partner countries' dedicated
cyber defense agencies, businesses and civil sector so that their citizens won't
experience the effects of this aggression themselves," Zhora said. "We are
working hard towards creating a unified secure cyberspace for the entire
civilized world."

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