Ukraine’s counterintelligence exposes 1,700 attempts at cyberattacks targeting defense forces - SBU

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Security Service (SBU) experts have detected 1,700 enemy attempts to penetrate computer networks of Ukraine’s defense forces.

That’s according to SBU Head Vasyl Maliuk, who spoke in an interview with ICTV, Ukrinform reports.

“We have a war of IT and, believe me, the enemy isn’t far behind here,” Maliuk said.

"More than 1,700 technical intrusions into the networks of our Defense Forces have been detected by our IT and military counterintelligence since war-start," he said.

According to Maliuk, the enemy widely employs sophisticated malware for its attacks.

"We have discovered seven varieties of those since the beginning of the war. They remotely implant them into any Android-type mobile terminal. After that, the enemy acquires data –what is in the target’s messengers (both mobile and PC). Also there’s an option of connecting to the Internet and wiretapping everything that is happening," the head of the security agency added.

To a clarifying question, whether this means that the enemy can penetrate the Android operating system, Maliuk answered: "There is a certain list of security measures, so-called measures to maintain appropriate hygiene, that must be taken so that the enemy is unable to do this. But we still discovered this large number of these ‘penetrations’.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, after the Ukrainian strikes damaged the Crimea Bridge, the Russians stopped using it for arms supplies to the temporarily occupied Crimea.

Photo: SBU