Russian based hackers could retaliate against UK sanctions with cyber attacks, Portsmouth university security expert warns

That is according to Dr Vasileios Karagiannopoulos, reader in Cybercrime and Cybersecurity at The University of Portsmouth.

He believes there is a possibility of nationalist hacker groups attacking the UK in retaliation to the restrictions.

The lecturer has confirmed examples of online aggression, including denial of service attacks (DDOS), have already taken place in Ukraine.

He told The News: ‘Cyber attacks have already been done against Ukraine.

‘It is not clear and confirmed the Russian government is behind them, but they are ongoing.

‘They might be from nationalist hacker groups.

‘The imposition of sanctions would mean there might be a retaliation in the form of cyber attacks against UK businesses and organisations.’

Dr Karagiannopoulos added these assaults took place at the beginning of January and last week.

He considers them ‘symbolic cyber attacks’, used to act as a warning to anyone opposing Russian interests.

Most of them were DDOS attacks which singled out Ukrainian military, government, and banking websites.

Dr Karagiannopoulos said: ‘These attacks flood a server or computer system with information requests, which crashes the server as it is trying service with the requests.’

The former University of Strathclyde and Edinburgh University Law School lecturer added that some hacks involved spreading pro-Russian sentiment.

Defacement attacks, also known as ‘virtual graffiti’, where hackers would take control of websites and display political messages.

These were directed at Ukrainian citizens and said their data had been exposed.

Dr Karagiannopoulos thinks the overall aim of cyber warfare would be to destabilise Ukraine internally – through high intensity and low intensity attacks.

He explained: ‘The message that a lot of personal information has been exposed might be used to try and intimidate the public in Ukraine, causing distrust towards the government and its systems.

‘DDOS attacks can also take out services, destabilising communications and financial systems.

‘It is a common tactic that we are seeing a lot of these activities on a regular basis, on an underlying level.’

The academic also warned malware and ransomware attacks could spread to the UK.

In 2017, nationwide NHS systems were throttled by the WannaCry virus, which took down unpatched operating systems and stopped them from working.

Dr Karagiannopoulos warns similar computer viruses could be used in retaliation to the sanctions against Russia – specifically launched against government websites and British businesses.

He added it was unlikely nationalist hacker groups would launch attacks against military systems, such as Royal Navy ships – due to the difficulty of any such operation – but they are capable of it.

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This would depend on how the conflict escalates, but the cyber security expert thinks protective measures can be put in place.

He said: ‘What we can do is make sure all the important systems are safely secured by firewalls, that software is updated, that we have incident response plans, especially for smaller businesses.

‘These businesses might not be fully prepared for cyber attacks, or infections from malware that may happened as collateral damage from hackers targeting UK systems.

‘I would urge people to seek National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) guidance and make sure their systems are updated, and plans are in place to deal with compromises if they happen.’

A message from the Editor, Mark Waldron

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