Russia-Linked Hackers Attack UK Defence Ministry
The British Ministry of Defence repelled a cyberattack by hackers linked to Russia who posed as journalists.
The Gaze reports on this with reference to Sky News.
The foiled hacking attempt linked to Russia was one of more than 90,000 cyberattacks directed against the British army and other defence units over the past two years, twice as many as in the previous two years, the Ministry of Defence said.
‘The Ministry of Defence has detected a phishing campaign targeting personnel with the aim of spreading malware,’ according to an analysis by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
The document notes that ‘the initial campaign consisted of two emails on a journalistic topic that attempted to represent a news organisation. The second campaign was on a financial topic, with targets directed at a commercial file resource.’
According to one official, the malware was linked to the Russian hacker group RomCom.
Details of the foiled hacking attack emerged after Defence Secretary John Healey said the British military was strengthening its offensive capabilities to carry out cyberattacks against enemy states such as Russia as part of the long-awaited UK defence review.
Work on the Strategic Defence Review was initiated by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in July last year, and its publication is expected ahead of a major NATO summit in June.
‘The nature of warfare is changing. The keyboard is now a weapon of war, and we are responding to that,’ Gilli told a group of journalists during a visit to the Global Security Operations Centre in Wiltshire, where the team that detected the Russian cyberattack is based.
The British government is also reportedly planning to invest more than £1 billion in improving its ability to find and strike targets on the battlefield using digital technology.
As The Gaze reported earlier, the UK and ten allied nations have jointly exposed a coordinated cyber espionage campaign by Russia's military intelligence service, targeting logistics and technology organisations crucial to Western support for Ukraine.