Conflict in Central Europe
Hackers crack rail system in Belarus to stop Russia’s advance on Ukraine
Ukraine: Videos show Russian troop movements
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The situation on the Ukrainian-Russian border is getting worse and worse. Now hackers from Belarus have apparently interfered. They want to have their homeland’s railway system hijacked – in order to delay the Russian deployment. It’s not the first digital attack in the conflict.
Troops slowly accumulating at the border, mutual accusations of escalation – the danger of a war in the heart of Europe has not seemed as great as it does at the border between Ukraine and Russia for a long time. Activists in Belarus now want to defuse the situation themselves. According to their own statements, they have hijacked the railway system in their home country with a Trojan. And are now trying to paralyze the Russian deployment.
The group, which calls itself “Cyber Partisans”, explained this on a Telegram channel. They want to use screenshots to prove that they have succeeded in penetrating the local railway systems. “We have encrypted most of the servers, databases and workstations to slow down and interrupt traffic,” it says.
Concrete goals
The declared goal of the action is to damage the government of President Alexander Lukashenko and to stop Russia’s advance. “The terrorist Lukashenko allows the occupation troops to cross our country,” they position themselves clearly against their own government and Russia. But they don’t want to endanger the citizens. “We deliberately avoided cyber attacks on automation and security systems in order to avoid emergency situations.”
The group had also made specific demands on Twitter. The tweet said the keys to recovering the data would only be released if the country freed 50 political prisoners and stopped supporting Russia’s advance towards Ukraine.
How credible the threat is cannot be fully assessed. So far there has been no confirmation of the hack from the Belarusian railway company. However, no tickets could be booked there, reports “Reuters”. There are “technical reasons” for this, the railway company told the agency.
Guerrilla tactics online
In the last week there have been a number of reports that Russia is increasingly using the Belarusian infrastructure for transporting troops to the Ukrainian border. Videos showed the transport of tanks and other war material on rails. Russia’s troops are said to have sent up to 200 trains, with an average of around 50 wagons. If a large part of this cargo does not arrive at its destination or arrives with a delay, this would have a noticeable effect on possible missions. However, the hackers emphasized to “Reuters” that they themselves could not yet assess whether they were successful.
Cyber experts rate the hack as quite realistic. The screenshots seem to show that someone has access to the well-protected servers, security expert Juan Andrés Guerrero-Saade confirmed to “Ars Technica”. Nevertheless, he would not want to determine whether it is actually a hack.
“If true, it would be an interesting twist on ransomware,” he told the site. “Most of the time we see these programs as a financial threat to corporations. But not as guerrilla tools used by political underdogs in revolutions.”
Cyber attacks as the means of choice
However, it would not be the first use of cyber attacks in the current conflict. The country is repeatedly shaken by severe attacks. The worst so far, the Trojan Notpetya, attacked hundreds of thousands of computers throughout Europe. Just a week ago, Ukraine was hit by a heavy attack that killed dozens of the country’s websites. Suspicion soon fell on a group linked to the Belarusian secret service, with tools similar to those already familiar to experts from Russia.
The attractiveness of cyber attacks is easy to explain: although they quickly cause a great deal of damage, their use – unlike armed force – has not yet been counted as an act of war. “Aggressive cyber operations can be implemented long before bullets and missiles are fired,” said MIT Technology Review expert John Hultquist. Also, because one can obfuscate and deny origins, counterattacks would be harder to justify.
The power grid as the greatest danger
However, experts see the greatest danger in a scenario that has never been used before in an armed conflict: In theory, an attack on a country’s power grid could paralyze all communication, transport and supply in one fell swoop – and so it does make it an easy target. According to a report in the New York Times, the United States and Great Britain began supporting Ukraine with protective measures for their network as early as December.
That such a strike is fundamentally possible was shown by numerous test balloons, in which hackers – suspected to be from Russia – repeatedly and carefully checked the security precautions of the power grids in the USA and Europe (find out more here). The tests reached their climax when, at the end of 2015, hacked power plants were switched off one after the other. The place for this shockingly successful test run: Ukraine.
Sources: Twitter, Ars Technica, Reuters, The Guardians, MIT Technology Review,NYTimes
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