Ukraine Among Top Three Countries Targeted by Cyberattacks from Russian Federation

From July 2020 to June 2021, the top three countries targeted by Russian nation-state actors were the United States, Ukraine, and the UK.

Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President for Customer Security and Trust at Microsoft, wrote this in his blog, commenting on the Microsoft Digital Defence Report.

According to Burt, during the past year, 58% of all cyberattacks observed by Microsoft from nation-states have come from Russia. He adds that Russian cyberattacks are increasingly targeting government agencies for intelligence gathering, which jumped from 3% of their targets a year ago to 53%.

Those were largely agencies involved in foreign policy, national security or defence.

After Russia, the largest volume of attacks Microsoft observed came from North Korea, Iran, China, South Korea, Turkey, and Vietnam.

The Microsoft Digital Defence Report states that 58% of all cyberattacks have come from Russia, 23% from North Korea, 11% from Iran, and 8% from China (decreased from 12%).

The document also states that the Russian share of attacks has increased significantly due to the NOBELIUM group, suspected of hacking SolarWinds, in operations to collect data from critical infrastructure.

Over the past year, NOBELIUM raised the number of Ukrainian customers impacted to more than 1,200. According to the American company, such expansion is linked with a build-up of Russian troops along Ukraine’s border.

Bohdan Marusyak