US Cyber Command has “stepped up” its efforts to help defend Ukraine from hacking threats since Russia’s invasion in late February, the command’s leader told lawmakers Tuesday in some of the most detailed comments yet on US military cyber assistance to Ukraine, APA reports citing CNN.
The command at the end of last year sent “hunt forward teams” — or cyber specialists trained to analyze malicious cyber activity — to Ukraine for over two months to help Kyiv prepare for potential Russian cyberattacks, Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Cyber Command’s support for Ukraine has also included “remote analytic support” and helping defend critical computer networks from outside the country, Nakasone said in prepared testimony.
“There’s a persistence that the Russians have towards this type of [cyber] activity,” Nakasone told senators. “And they have been in Ukraine for a long time.”
While there have been an array of Russia-linked hacking incidents against Ukrainian organizations since the war began, there haven’t been the level of destructive hacks against critical infrastructure that some analysts feared.
One exception was a cyberattack at the onset of the war that knocked out internet service for tens of thousands of satellite modems in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. US officials are investigating that incident as a potential state-sponsored Russian hack, CNN previously reported.