Guerrero-Saade, who has been at the forefront of research on AcidRain, says that where the previous malware used by the Russians was closely targeted, AcidRaid is more of a universal weapon.
“What’s very worrying about AcidRaid is that they’ve removed all security checks,” he says. “With the previous windshield wipers, the Russians were careful to run only on specific devices. Now these security controls are gone and they are pretty dirty. They have a capability that they can reuse. The question is, what attack on the supply chain will we see? then?
The attack turned out to be typical of the “hybrid” war strategy used by Moscow, experts say. It was launched in concert with the invasion on the ground. This exact type of coordination between Russian cyber operations and military forces has been seen at least six times, according to a Microsoft investigation, which highlights the emerging role of cybernetics in modern warfare.
“Russia’s coordinated and destructive cyberattack before the invasion of Ukraine demonstrates that cyberattacks are used actively and strategically in modern warfare, even if the threat and consequences of a cyberattack are not always visible for the public, “said Danish Defense Minister Morten Bødskov. , said in a statement. “The cyber threat is constant and evolving. Cyberattacks can do great damage to our critical infrastructure, with fatal consequences. “
In this case, the damage came from Ukraine and affected thousands of Internet users and wind farms connected to the Internet in Central Europe. And the implications are even greater than that: Viasat works with the U.S. military and its partners around the world.
“Obviously, the Russians damaged it,” says Guerrero-Saade. “I don’t think they wanted to do so much damage by splashing and involving the European Union. They gave the EU the pretext to react by affecting 5,800 German and other wind turbines in the EU. ”
A few hours before AcidRain began its destructive work against Viasat, Russian hackers used another cleaner, called HermeticWiper, against Ukrainian government computers. The game book was strangely similar, except that instead of satellite communications, the targets were Windows machines on networks that, in those early hours of the invasion, would be important for the Kyiv government to mount effective resistance.
