Major international and Ukrainian cybersecurity news in August 2023

The US Armed Forces continue to revise their digital strategy and cyberspace operations in accordance with the lessons of the russian-Ukrainian war. The key here is to build up the human resources of all branches of the military, in particular, in terms of offensive cyber operations. At the same time, discussions are ongoing about the readiness of individual commands to operate in the cyber domain.

Ukraine's international cooperation is developing against the backdrop of russian attacks, which are constantly detected by Ukrainian cybersecurity agencies. During a meeting of the NCSCC working group on cooperation with the CCDCOE, Ukrainian experts agreed on a Roadmap for cooperation between Ukraine and the CCDCOE. Ukraine continues to study and discuss international experience and conceptual frameworks for creating cyber forces in Ukraine. At the same time, russia continues to attack Ukraine in cyberspace. At the beginning of the month, SSU cyber specialists blocked attempts by russian military intelligence to gain access to the Armed Forces' combat data exchange system, and phishing attacks on the public sector continue. Ukrainian experts are studying and describing the activities of the Gamaredon group during the Ukrainian counteroffensive.

NIST presented the second version of one of the key standards in the field of cybersecurity - the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. This standard is the basis for numerous cybersecurity efforts by organizations around the world, and the second version should make it even more universal.

russia continues its destructive cyber activities against Ukraine and its allies. Cybersecurity experts have identified a number of activities of russian government hacker groups that may indicate their involvement in or preparation for active measures in cyberspace. For example, BlueCharlie is creating a new attack infrastructure, and Midnight Blizzard is actively using Microsoft Teams for social engineering activities. The NoName057 group has also attacked a number of French and Dutch government websites, as well as Polish and Czech banks, demanding that they stop supporting Ukraine.

Ukrainian cyber experts have discovered a dangerous cyber operation that russia planned to conduct against mobile devices used by the Ukrainian military. The report on this operation was prepared by the SSU, and this data was later confirmed in an expanded form by the cybersecurity government agencies of the Five Eyes alliance.

More about legislative changes, initiatives of national actors, trends, forecasts and analytical assessments, international and Ukrainian news in the field of cybersecurity of Ukraine is available here.