Cyberwarfare: Why nation-states engage in Cyber-Attacks?

Context: Alongside the missiles and bombs slamming down in Ukraine, the country has also been hit by a wave of cyber-attacks targeting critical infrastructure companies.

Key Incidences in Ukraine

• Ukraine has been one of the primary targets of Russia since 2020.
• The recent spate of attacks started in mid-January and knocked out websites of the ministry of foreign affairs and the ministry of education.
• Government websites and a number of banks have been hit by another mass distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.
• DDoS attacks disrupt online services by overwhelming websites with more traffic than their server can handle.

About Cyber Warfare

• Cyberwarfare has emerged as a new form of retaliation or passive aggression deployed by nations that do not want to go to actual war but want to send a tough message to their opponents.
• In these types of warfare, nation-state actors ??attack and attempt to damage another nation’s computers or information networks through computer viruses or denial-of-service attacks, especially for strategic or military purposes.

Key motive behind this attacks

• State-backed cyber attacks are usually carried out to steal state secrets, trade deals and weapons blueprints, or target large multinationals to steal their intellectual property (IP) and use it to build local industry.
• However, when states launch cyberattacks on other states as a result of worsening of geopolitical relations, the target is usually critical infrastructure firms to disrupt economic activity.

Which countries are behind state-backed cyberattacks?

• Russia is one of the top perpetrators of state-backed cyberattacks.
• According to an October 2021 report by Microsoft Corp., Russia accounted for 58% of state-backed attacks worldwide, followed by North Korea (23%), Iran (11%), and China (8%).
• North Korea is said to have built a cyber-army of 7,000 hackers.

India's position in such type of Attacks

• Such cyberattacks rose 100% between 2017 and 2021, according to a global study by Hewlett-Packard and the University of Surrey.
• In 2019, the administrative network of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was hit by a malware attack by North Korea-backed Lazarus Group.
• China-backed hackers were believed to be behind a power outage in Mumbai in 2020.
• According to Black Lotus Labs, Pakistan-based hackers targeted power firms and one government organization in India in early 2021 using Remote Access Trojans.