{"id":3019,"date":"2021-12-22T20:31:29","date_gmt":"2021-12-22T20:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/energiesnet.com\/espanol\/?p=3019"},"modified":"2021-12-22T20:31:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T20:31:38","slug":"u-s-and-britain-help-ukraine-prepare-for-potential-russian-cyberassault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/energiesnet.com\/espanol\/u-s-and-britain-help-ukraine-prepare-for-potential-russian-cyberassault\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. and Britain help Ukraine prepare for potential Russian cyberassault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Russia has attacked Ukraine\u2019s power grid in the past, and experts say Moscow might take
similar steps as it masses troops along the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Ukrainian power grid was built in the days of the Soviet Union and is connected to Russia\u2019s,
making the software as familiar to the attackers as to its operators.Credit…Valentyn Ogirenko\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes \/ NYT

WASHINGTON
EnergiesNet.com 12 22 2021
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the closing days of 2015, the lights went out across a swath of Ukraine as Russian hackers remotely took over an electric utility\u2019s control center and flipped off one power station after another, while the company\u2019s operators stared at their screens helplessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next year, the same thing happened, this time around Kyiv, the capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now the United States and Britain have quietly dispatched cyberwarfare experts to Ukraine in hopes of better preparing the country to confront what they think may be the next move by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as he again menaces the former Soviet republic<\/a>: Not an invasion with the 175,000 troops<\/a> he is massing on the border, but cyberattacks that take down the electric grid, the banking system, and other critical components of Ukraine\u2019s economy and government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s goal, according to American intelligence assessments, would be to make Ukraine\u2019s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, look inept and defenseless \u2014 and perhaps provide an excuse for an invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one sense, the Russian cybercampaign against Ukraine never stopped, American officials say, though until recently it bubbled along at a low level. But in interviews, American officials and experts say the action has stepped up over the past month even while public attention has been focused on the troop buildup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a widespread campaign targeting numerous Ukrainian government agencies, including internal affairs \u2014 the national police \u2014 and their electric utilities,\u201d said Dmitri Alperovitch, a leading investigator of Russian cyberactivity and the chairman of Silverado Policy Accelerator, a new research group in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Alperovitch, who emigrated from Russia to the United States as a child, said the Russian leader sees the cyberattacks as \u201cpreparation of the battlefield.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American officials say a military invasion is far from a certainty. \u201cThe current assessment of the U.S. government is that he has not made a decision,\u201d said Jake Sullivan, President Biden\u2019s national security adviser, speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Sullivan did not address the Russian cyberactivity, but it has been an intense focus at the White House, the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and United States Cyber Command, whose \u201ccyber mission forces\u201d are deployed to identify vulnerabilities around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Russian cyberactivity was discussed by roughly a dozen officials, who requested anonymity because the information was derived from classified intelligence and sensitive discussions about how to mitigate the Russian threat. Those conversations have focused on whether Mr. Putin thinks that a crippling of Ukraine\u2019s infrastructure could be his best hope of achieving his primary goal: ousting the Ukrainian government and replacing it with a puppet leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The calculus, one senior intelligence official said, would be that such an attack would not require him to occupy the country \u2014 or suffer as many of the\u00a0sanctions<\/a>\u00a0that would almost certainly follow a physical invasion<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already Mr. Putin has been working to build support domestically and in Africa and South and Central America. Russian-led information campaigns have been focused on denigrating the Ukrainian government and accusing its leader of creating a humanitarian crisis in the country\u2019s east, where Ukrainian government forces have been battling Russia-led separatists for years, according to U.S. and allied officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American officials declined to describe the cyberteams that have been inserted into Ukraine. In a statement, the Biden administration said only that \u201cwe have long supported Ukraine\u2019s efforts to shore up cyberdefenses and increase its cyberresiliency.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokeswoman for the British government said the assistance that Britain and its allies were providing was defensive in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While neither government would provide details, officials said the United States was considering a larger deployment, including resources from U.S. Cyber Command. But it is unclear how much good a bigger team could do beyond demonstrating support. \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s too much to patch,\u201d one American official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainian grid was built in the days of the Soviet Union, connected to Russia\u2019s. It has been upgraded with Russian parts. The software is as familiar to the attackers as to its operators. And while Ukraine has repeatedly vowed to fix its system, Mr. Putin\u2019s hackers, or at least teams loyal to him, have shown time and time again that they know how to bring parts of the country to a halt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an interview, Sean Plankey, a former Energy Department cyberexpert who is now an executive at DataRobot, said that Russian hackers understand every linkage in the design \u2014 and most likely have insiders who can help them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Ukrainians have learned, a cyberattack on critical infrastructure is particularly difficult to deter. In the cyberworld, there is no broad consensus about what constitutes an act of war, nor agreement about how deeply Mr. Putin could harm Ukraine without triggering a Western response. In the past, his attacks on Ukraine have resulted in almost no response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2015 attack, which began in late December, was particularly instructive. It was directed at a major operator of Ukraine\u2019s grid. Videos taken during the attack showed a skeleton crew of operators \u2014 the attackers knew the holidays would be a particularly vulnerable time \u2014 struggling to understand what was happening as hackers took over their screens remotely. Substations were flipped off. Neighborhood by neighborhood, lights went dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was jaw-dropping for us,\u201d Andy Ozment, who ran cyberemergency response for the Department of Homeland Security and helped investigate the attacks, said at the time. \u201cThe exact scenario we were worried about wasn\u2019t paranoia. It was playing out before our eyes.\u201d The hackers had a final flourish: The last thing they turned off was the emergency power at the utility company\u2019s operations center, so that the Ukrainian workers were left sitting in their seats in the dark, cursing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the holidays approaching again, American officials say they are on high alert. But if Mr. Putin does launch a cyberattack, either as a stand-alone action or as a precursor to a physical-world attack, it will most likely come after Orthodox Christmas, at the end of the first week of January, according to people briefed on the intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Understand the Escalating Tensions Over Ukraine<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Card 1 of 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brewing conflict. <\/strong>Antagonism between Ukraine and Russia has been simmering since 2014, when the Russian military crossed into Ukrainian territory, annexing Crimea<\/a> and whipping up a rebellion<\/a> in the east. A tenuous cease-fire was reached in 2015<\/a>, but peace has been elusive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spike in hostilities. <\/strong>Russia has recently been building <\/a>up forces<\/a> near its border with Ukraine<\/a>, and the Kremlin\u2019s rhetoric toward its neighbor has hardened. Concern grew in late October, when Ukraine used an armed drone<\/a> to attack a howitzer operated by Russian-backed separatists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ominous warnings. <\/strong>Russia called the strike a destabilizing act that violated the cease-fire agreement, raising fears of a new intervention in Ukraine that could draw the United States and Europe into a new phase of the conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kremlin\u2019s position. <\/strong>President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who has increasingly portrayed NATO\u2019s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country<\/a>, said that Moscow\u2019s military buildup was a response to Ukraine\u2019s deepening partnership with the alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A measured approach.\u00a0<\/strong>President Biden has said he\u00a0is seeking a stable relationship<\/a>\u00a0with Russia. So far, his administration is focusing\u00a0on maintaining a dialogue with Moscow<\/a>, while seeking to develop\u00a0deterrence measures<\/a>\u00a0in concert with European countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. and allied officials have discussed a variety of sanctions that could possibly deter Russia. But all of the measures that could possibly cut deep enough for Russia to care would also cause pain in Europe, which is highly dependent on Russia for winter energy supplies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Senator Angus King of Maine, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in an interview that if an invasion does take place, the first sign will be in cyberspace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a slightest doubt that if there is an invasion or other kind of incursion into Ukraine, it will start with cyber,\u201d said Mr. King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. King has long argued that the United States and its allies need to think more deeply about how to deter cyberattacks. The United States, Mr. King said, should issue a declaratory policy about what the consequences for such attacks will be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo the question is,\u201d Mr. King said, \u201cwhat are our tools to to deter that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Representative Mike Gallagher, Republican of Wisconsin who along with Mr. King leads the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, said the United States should try to prevent a cyberattack on Ukraine by making it clear it would prompt a strong response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe should be preparing our own cyberresponse,\u201d Mr. Gallagher said. \u201cWe have very powerful weapons in the cyberdomain that we could use against Putin if he chooses to go further. We seem divided, but there\u2019s a lot of options we have to prevent this from devolving into a full-on crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cyberoperation retains allure for Moscow over a full-on military operation, because Russia can operate under a thin veil of deniability. And Mr. Putin has demonstrated over the last decade that the flimsiest of disguises is good enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In previous cyberattacks on Ukraine, Russian operatives made the incursions look like the work of criminal groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAfter the fact, you can be pretty sure what we saw was state activity, using the false flag of criminal activity,\u201d said Jim Richberg, the former national intelligence manager for cyber and now a vice president at Fortinet, a security firm. \u201cThey wanted it to have this broad impact on critical infrastructure in Ukraine and make it look like it was a criminal thing that went awry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Mr. Putin, a cyberattack that he can officially deny, but no one doubts is his handiwork, is the best of both worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor someone like Putin, part of it is to be seen, to deliver a message,\u201d Mr. Richberg said. \u201cThey can be good, but being good doesn\u2019t mean they want to be invisible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes from The New York Times-NYT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

nyt.com 12 21 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia has attacked Ukraine\u2019s power grid in the past, and experts say Moscow might take similar steps as it masses troops along the border. By David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes \/ NYT WASHINGTONEnergiesNet.com 12 22 2021 In the closing days of 2015, the lights went out across a swath of Ukraine as Russian …<\/p>\n

U.S. and Britain help Ukraine prepare for potential Russian cyberassault<\/span> Leer m\u00e1s »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-diarias"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t