The cyber war between Russia and Ukraine is described as” the most sustained set of cyber operations coming up against the best collective defense we have seen,” according to Paul Chichester, Director of Operations at the UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC ).
Ukraine’s digital defenses have proven to be extremely strong, successfully preventing what could have been Russia’s” computer Pearl Harbor” – a destructive surprise cyberattack intended to cause popular disruption.
By demonstrating a degree of protective strength and endurance that mirrors its military will, Ukraine has successfully resisted Russia’s digital menace. Between the start of the full-scale war and June 2023, it has been reported that Soviet thieves attempted to hack into Russian systems in at least 260 million times.
Learning from past experience, Ukraine has been able to develop a powerful computer security to resist Russia’s invasion. However, it is important to point out that Western governments ‘ extensive cyber aid has been a key factor in this achievement. This assistance extends beyond mere political support, encompassing technical and strategic support to boost Ukraine’s cyber capabilities.
The role of technology businesses has remained just as crucial. These institutions have provided critical resources and expertise, contributing significantly to the increasing of Ukraine’s digital defenses. The Cyber Defense Assistance Collaborative for Ukraine ( CDAC ) was established in March 2020 to coordinate support from Western tech companies in Ukraine.
The business assisted in developing an “inventory of the possible services, products, and tools Russian companies can offer, as well as arrange with various Ukrainian firms and understand their needs as quickly as possible.”
The US defense Cyber Command sent a staff to Ukraine in December 2021 to check whether Russian hackers had now hacked into Russian techniques before Russia’s full-scale war.
In response to increased Russian aggression, their task was to “hunt ahead” and discover computer network that had already been hacked. In the wake of the original war, Ukraine performed better than some had anticipated on the cyber front. The West provides a lot of computer assist in secret, and its reach is likely to be much greater than what has been reported in the media.
Ukraine’s knowledge 2014–2022
Since 2014, Ukraine has a lot of practice fighting Russia online. According to a Russian official,” Russia has essentially been training us since 2014 with their daily attacks.” But, by February 2022, we were prepared and knew all about their skills”.
Russia’s ongoing cyberattacks against the nation have also raised awareness of security and the crucial role that civil society may play in achieving cyber resilience.
Russia likewise underestimated Ukraine’s cyber capabilities to endure. As Yurii Shchyhol, brain of Ukraine’s State Service of Special Communications and Information Protection, explained:
The recent practice in Ukraine has demonstrated that attacks demand both time and knowledge to be prepared. This helps explain why, since Russia’s first war technique in the spring of 2022 failed, there have been fewer high-complexity digital offensives. Russia just did not have ample preparations for a first-large wave of cyberattacks and did not anticipate that Ukraine would be able to tolerate it.
The position of the West’s personal business
The secret business in the West has a significant part in keeping Ukraine online. The significant contribution that Western private sector organizations have made, generally significant ones in cybersecurity and technology, has been made to keeping Ukraine online.
These companies have provided experience, resources, and sometimes strong support in securing Ukraine’s modern infrastructure. For the protection of a large portion of Ukraine’s equipment from the assault of Russian distributed denial-of-service attacks, companies like Cloudflare and Google provided anti-DDoS assistance.
In order to move Russian government operations and information into the sky, businesses like Amazon and Microsoft aided in minimizing the impact of Russian dynamic and digital wiper attacks. Georgii Dubynski, Ukraine’s deputy secretary for digital change, believes that Ukraine’s collaborations with private companies in the West have played a vital role in its computer security and endurance.
The Carnegie Endowment’s Nick Beecroft made the following point:
A deeper defining characteristic of the protective effort has been the integration of big British technology providers, especially Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft. These businesses have added protective level and resilience far beyond what Ukraine may have achieved on its own, thanks to the ability to travel government data and services to distributed cloud servers, offer automated protection of large networks, coupled with dedicated protection of high-risk users, and continuously update threat intelligence drawn from international telemetry.
In the end, removing Ukrainian government and economic data from Ukraine and transferring it to the cloud saved it at the cost of over 10 million gigabytes.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the deputy prime minister and minister of digital transformation in Ukraine, even claimed that Amazon Web Services “made one of the biggest contributions to Ukraine’s victory by giving the country access to and resources for moving to the cloud and securing crucial information.”
Microsoft will continue to offer cloud services to Ukrainian Government institutions, including the military, schools, universities and hospitals, free of charge through 2024, according to Fedorov.
This extension is part of the US$ 540 million in free services, technical support, equipment and grants provided by Microsoft to Ukraine. This support has been crucial in enhancing Ukraine’s government’s security and preventing Russian attacks from destroying or losing important government information, in addition to financial savings for the state budget.
Microsoft itself has been the target of Russian cyberattacks because of its strong support for Ukraine and extensive support for its cyber defense. Microsoft made it known that the Russian state-sponsored hacker group Nobelium, known for its sophisticated SolarWinds attack, targeted its corporate systems. Late last year, the company reported that Nobelium accessed some of the team’s senior leadership members ‘ email accounts.
Western support for Ukraine’s cyber defenses
Western investment into Ukraine’s cyber defenses since 2014 has helped Ukraine withstand Russian attacks. Ukraine has benefited from advanced technological equipment and infrastructure from Western nations, which will improve its cybersecurity.
Companies like Microsoft are providing Ukraine with threat intelligence data, as well as sophisticated software to identify and mitigate cyber threats, hardware to improve network security, and platforms for enhanced monitoring and analysis of cyber activities.
A significant factor in Russia’s failed cyber offensive was its underestimation of Ukraine’s cyber defense capabilities. Since 2014, Ukraine’s defenses have been significantly strengthened by international investment and support for its cyber infrastructure.
Russian cyberattacks did n’t fail outright. Rather, nearly 10 years of cyber war and significant Western investment, including public- private partnerships, have helped forge a strong defense.
Therefore, Ukraine’s ability to react quickly and stop the effects of Russian cyberattacks has slowed down the impact of these attacks. In his comments on the US National Security Agency’s ( NSA ) defense forward strategy, David Luber cited:
As United States Cyber Command deployed their troops to train]Ukrainians] prior to the invasion, we worked very closely with them as they looked at that defense. And as they discovered malicious software and activity, we collaborated with them to [ensure ] that information is broadly shared with both government and industry, not just to defend NATO, but also to defend other allies and the US.
Protecting Ukraine’s networks also protects Western networks. Since 2014, the United States has significantly contributed to enhancing Ukraine’s energy security, providing over$ 160 million in technical assistance.
In this collaboration, the US Department of Energy worked closely with the Ukrainian government to strengthen Ukraine’s energy infrastructure’s resilience and advance national response strategies, particularly in the wake of cyberattacks that targeted the nation’s electric grid.
These efforts significantly reduced the impact of Russian cyberattacks, which had previously caused significant damage as a result of Russia’s initial 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
By 2022, thanks to these strengthened defenses, Ukraine’s energy infrastructure remained robust against the cyber threats. In an effort to disrupt and devastate Ukraine’s power grid, Russia resorted to using cruise missiles and drones.
Russia’s failure to integrate cyber and conventional attacks
Russian combatants have n’t been successful in integrating cyberattacks with conventional ones. The apparent lack of synergy between Russia’s cyberattacks and its ground forces was one of the main problems.
In order to complement and enhance the viability of physical military operations, cyberattacks must be timed and targeted. But while Moscow aimed to utilize cyberattacks to gather intelligence in Ukraine,” Russian brutality and incompetence” reduced their ability to take advantage of the intelligence, “according to a Carnegie Endowment study.
What should be learned from Russia’s insufficient preparation to launch coordinated strikes on crucial targets in a cyberwar. Cyberattacks, says a CSIS study, are most effective” when combined with other weapons, including conventional delivery systems, precision- guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, and electronic warfare. This combination can stifle command centers and advanced weapons systems and cause the enemy’s forces to become less popular.
The robust cyber defense ecosystem
Defense has proven to be the victor in the Russian-Ukraine cyber war, thanks to support from the West. Russia’s cyberwar against Ukraine has received a strong international response, with numerous nations and international organizations providing Ukraine with extensive cybersecurity support that has aided the nation in thwarting Russia’s advance.
According to Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, the Russia-Ukraine cyber war demonstrated that” a new form of collective defense has” proven to be more powerful than conventional cyber capabilities.
Ukraine’s cyber defense has relied on a coalition of partners supporting its defense, including governments, private companies and NGOs, versus Russia as a major cyber power.
Private companies make a significant investment in network surveillance to ensure that the world’s computer code, equipment, and network infrastructure are maintained. Simultaneously, academic institutions, governments and nonprofit organizations diligently seek out software bugs, providing regular updates to these companies about any shortcomings or vulnerabilities they discover.
In response, there are strong ecosystems in place to support cyber defense, especially in Ukraine, where Western governments and private companies have bolstered its defense. It can take years to create a sophisticated cyber weapon, but the code that hosts the vulnerability can be deleted in seconds.
David Kirichenko , is a Ukrainian- American security engineer and freelance journalist. Since Russia’s full- scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 he has taken a civilian , activist role.
This is the seventh and final part of a series”, Lessons from the first cyberwar. ‘” Read part one,  , part two,  , part three,  , part four,  , part five and part six. These articles are excerpted, with kind permission, from , a report the author presented at the UK Parliament , on February 20 on behalf of the Henry Jackson Society. The source of the facts and quotations is detailed in the original report.