10 | New Scientist | 5 March 2022
RUSSIA has invaded Ukraine
from land, air and sea, but it is also
fighting on the digital front with
disinformation and cyberattacks.
As Russian soldiers set foot
in Ukraine on 24 February,
conflicting reports spread across
social media, muddying the
waters and making it difficult
to see how far the invasion had
progressed. This was by design.
Russia has long relied on its
prowess in the military doctrine
of maskirovka, or altering the
perception of reality to sow
confusion, says Lynette
Nusbacher, former head of
the UK government’s Strategic
Horizons Unit.
“Russia can be counted on to
optimise its ability to operate in
enemy [territory] and shape enemy
perceptions using deception,
camouflage, disinformation and
perhaps deceptive artillery fires
and armoured attacks in order
to achieve their aims,” she says.
We have already seen that in
Ukraine. Alongside using what
seem like staged videos that
attempt to frame Ukraine as
the aggressor, Russia has
swarmed social media with
disinformation and sent threats
to Ukraine’s population.
The social media maskirovka
strategy is one that Russia has
honed since 2014, when it annexed
Crimea, a peninsula that was
formerly part of Ukraine. “This
is Russia’s bread and butter,”
says Ed Arnold at the Royal
United Services Institute (RUSI),
a UK think tank.
Russia can succeed with
this strategy where Western
governments can’t because of
differing attitudes to honesty,
he says. “We just can’t competeGWEN
GOAT/GETT
Y^ IMAGESThe Ukrainian flag
drawn with stylised
computer code“In my assessment, Russia
is decisively losing this
information conflict,” says
Emerson T. Brooking at the
Atlantic Council, a US think tank.
“Its actions have received nearly
universal condemnation. Its
disinformation and false flags
have been largely dispelled before
they could take root.”
Russia also seems to be faltering
in its cyberassault. As the invasion
began, the websites of many of
Ukraine’s banks and government
departments were taken offline
by a large distributed denial of
service (DDoS) attack believed
to be the work of Russia, but now
the tables have turned. As New
Scientist went to press, many
Russian government websites
were offline, with the hacking
group Anonymous claiming to
be responsible.
And while authorities in the US,
UK and elsewhere were warning
organisations to improve their
cyber defences before the invasion
began, major attacks have yet to
materialise.
Part of the risk to these nations
isn’t from a direct Russian attack
on IT infrastructure outsideUkraine – though that could
happen – but instead an attack
on Ukrainian IT affecting
Western businesses. One in five
Fortune 500 companies rely on
Ukraine’s IT outsourcing sector,
according to Ukraine’s Ministry
of Foreign Affairs.
“We’ve seen in the past
that Russia has the intent
and capability to cause
major disruption through
cyberoperations,” says Jamie
MacColl, also at RUSI.Ready to act
Both the US and UK seem ready
to fight back. According to NBC,
US president Joe Biden has been
presented with a “menu of
options” for cyberattacks against
Russia, including disrupting
internet connectivity or shutting
down the nation’s power grid.
Meanwhile, UK defence
minister Ben Wallace told
parliament on 21 February
that a long-planned offensive
cyberattack agency, the National
Cyber Force, had “already been
established” and was growing in
size, adding that “the best part
of defence is offence”.
This is no surprise, says
Nusbacher. “People at a senior
level in Western governments
have for a decade or more been
calling for calibrated cyberattack
options to respond to both kinetic
and cyber incoming attacks.”
“For the moment, it seems
that most such incursions are
considered digital espionage and
sabotage, more so than full-out
conflict,” says Agnes Venema at
the University of Malta.
Any attacks by the UK wouldn’t
be against Russian civilian
infrastructure, says MacColl. “It
will be about degrading [Russia’s]
ability to conduct cyberattacks
against us.” ❚1 in 5
Fortune 500 companies rely on
Ukraine’s IT outsourcing sectorNews focus Ukraine invasion
in the information war,” says
Arnold. “Democracies, and the
way you do these things, make
it very difficult.”
Western efforts at combating
misinformation instead tend
to fall to independent open-
source intelligence (OSINT)
organisations, like Bellingcat,
which trawl social media to
puncture Russian propaganda.The combination of grassroots
OSINT investigators and top-down
rebuttals by nation states has
already tackled large volumes of
Russian disinformation around
the invasion of Ukraine as it is
being spread online. The US and
UK governments took the unusual
step of revealing Russia’s plans
to invade Ukraine, sharing
intelligence warnings of Russia’s
invasion prior to boots arriving
on the ground. When the invasion
began, OSINT investigators
disseminated troop movements
as they happened.Analysis CyberwarfareThe digital battleground Russia has a reputation for its ability to wage war
online by spreading disinformation and launching cyberattacks, but this time
it seems to be faltering, says Chris Stokel-Walker