On February 23, 2022, the cybersecurity world entered a new age, the age of the hybrid war. On that day, hours before missiles were launched and tanks rolled across borders, Russian actors launched a massive destructive cyberattack against Ukrainian government, technology, and financial sector targets characterised as the year of the hack by many research groups.
The year 2022 has been characterised as a year in which organised nation-state attacks have influenced independent Sovereign Nations, and found themselves impacted to a level never witnessed in prior decades. We highlight a series of surveys from research houses and security monitoring agencies assessing the nature of information operations impacting public government systems, private sector health supply chain and all the way through critical military defense assets.
Microsoft has reported an increased nation-state attacks as competing governments rush to compromise systems for cyber espionage and to spread misinformation. The company also observed increased password attacks as hackers “industrialize” cybercrime, thus lowering the entry barrier.
According to Microsoft, nation-state attacks targeting critical infrastructure doubled from 20% to 40% in a year. This increase is primarily due to Russia targeting the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and its allies while also trying to gather intelligence by compromising IT firms worldwide.
According to MicrosoftMicrosoft Digital Defense Report 2022,, 90% of Russian attacks were against NATO countries, with nearly half (48%) targeting IT firms.
Microsoft’s threat intelligence team also found that the time between the discovery and commoditization of software vulnerabilities had significantly reduced. The tech giant observed that it takes 14 days from when a vulnerability is publicly disclosed to its exploitation in the wild.
In this report Edna Conway, Vice President, Security & Risk Officer, Cloud Infrastructure outlined said;“ICT infrastructure suppliers are increasingly targets as they enable widespread replication of a single attack. At the same time, global legislation, regulation, and customer demands for supply chain security and resiliency are on the rise, often diverging in their requirements. The solution is partnership. Together with
suppliers and global governments”
Many other Cyber security analysts agree with the “state of cyber warfare” that had impacted throughout 2022, the issues of social stability and governments - attempting to manage anti disinformation campaigns across the globe. Mandiant also provided insight with the release of the second issue of its Cyber Snapshot report, looking at the proliferation of information operations (IOs), threats to NFTs and cryptocurrency, and enterprise security best practices.
The researchers note that Russian state-sponsored threat actors are currently “conducting widespread IO campaigns to bolster the positive perception of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Russian people.”
Meanwhile, China-aligned actors are carrying out information operations to “sway public opinion against the expansion of rare-earth minerals mining and refining operations in the U.S. and Canada, likely as an attempt to protect China’s heavy investments in rare-earth production.”
The researchers add, “Mandiant finds that these kinds of campaigns are happening constantly. We regularly see new actors who operate on behalf of nation-states that have never before demonstrated a significant cyber capability.”
ESET has published a report on POLONIUM, a Lebanese threat actor that sometimes coordinates with Iranian threat actors to target organizations in Israel. POLONIUM has exclusively targeted Israeli entities over the past year, with the goal of conducting espionage:
"According to ESET telemetry, POLONIUM has targeted more than a dozen organizations in Israel since at least September 2021, with the group’s most recent actions being observed in September 2022.
Despite these reports, dependencies on cloud-based technology, AI and social media platforms are having great benefits in communities for the economy and government authorities. However, it is evident that 2023 will remain a challenging year for governments maintaining a delicate balance between policy observers supporting democratisation of “data freedoms”, legislators issuing data privacy restriction reform, and the ever increasing government intervention which may spark authoritarian behavior - acting in the interest of national security.
