Cyber defence teams in the war

The war in Ukraine has intensified with the recognition by Russia of the two self-proclaimed separatist republics of Donbass and the European Union is preparing to face possible cyber attacks by deploying its ‘troops’.

That’s why six European Union countries will provide Ukraine with cybersecurity experts to help the country defend against these dangers (and this comes from a tweet from the Lithuanian defense ministry).

Just on the afternoon of Wednesday 23 February, it appears from Ukrainian sources that the sites of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the Parliament were offline due to a cyber attack, of the distributed denial of service (DDOS) type, according to the first assessments of the Ministry of Digital Transition. A distributed denial of service (Ddos) attack is a cyber threat as simple to implement as it is effective since it is capable of knocking out a site, a company or entire critical infrastructures.

To use an analogy to explain this type of attack, think of a crowd of people trying to pass through a door at the same time, designed to allow access to one person at a time, thus preventing access to the room (website) and paralyzing normal operations. In the face of threats and dangers such as the one that was taking place, the request for support from Ukraine has been accepted, as well as from Lithuania, from Croatia, Poland, Estonia, Romania and the Netherlands which have activated a cyber rapid response team (Crrt).