A Brief History
On June 27, 2017, a massive cyber attack began on Europe, the USA, and Australia, with Ukraine being the main target. Businesses, government offices, utilities, banks, and other targets were hit, 80% of which were in Ukraine.
Digging Deeper
Although disguised to appear as ransomware, the 2 day attacks were found out by Ukrainian investigators to have been perpetrated by Russian agents within Ukrainian territory. The hackers’ equipment was seized, and it was also discovered this same group was responsible for a 2016 attack against Ukrainian financial institutions and utilities.
After the 2014 seizure of the Crimea by Russia, relations between Ukraine and Russia have been strained with many accusations by each side of sabotage and cyber meddling. Despite Ukrainian insistence, no hard evidence was provided to prove Russian culpability for the 2017 cyber-attacks.
Question for students (and subscribers): Should cyber attacks be considered an act of war? Why or why not? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Charles Rivers Editors. Russian Cyber Warfare: The History of Russia’s State-Sponsored Attacks across the World. Independently published, 2019.
Haynes, Dominic. A Brief History of Ukraine: A Singular People Within the Crucible of Empires. Independently published, 2022.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by User:Jbuket of Petya’s ransom note displayed on a compromised system, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.