It's not a matter of IT systems but a matter of CURRENT IT systems, who happen to be connected on public network even when there are not much reasons to do so, who happen to be full of proprietary crapware developed in awful ways nobody knows really how anything works etc.<p>Let's play a game: how many time we will need to see ALL cars of a certain brand bricked by a bad OTA upgrade or a deliberate attack? It's a matter of IT/cracking OR a matter of current commercial-drive bad IT evolution?<p>Try to read a bit about recent famous aqueduct sabotages like<p><a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/us-government-discloses-more-ransomware-attacks-on-water-plants/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/us-government...</a><p><a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-undetected-on-queensland-water-supplier-server-for-9-months/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-undet...</a><p><a href="https://arstechnica.com/?p=1765767" rel="nofollow">https://arstechnica.com/?p=1765767</a><p>and so on. It's really a matter of hacking and cracking? Honestly my own personal answer is no. It's a matter of widespread ignorance and business practice.
Compared with some of the pre-war predictions, the visible effects of Russian cyber-campaigns have been somewhat underwhelming. E.g. the Ukrainian power grid remained largely online until the Russians started to launch physical attacks on the infrastructure. Perhaps they've already squandered their best assets (e.g. zero-days) or are keeping them for later / other enemies.
I worked triage ops for a private bug bounty platform when the war kicked off. We immediately embargoed all of our Russian researchers. Most of them were doing really excellent work for us and were very talented, top contributors to a number of programs. I suppose the look of "paying Russians" was just too unpalatable for our leadership.<p>Said researchers are active on Twitter and have since turned to openly posting about cybercrime. Sad turn of events all done in the name of "Ukraine good".
One of the more interesting take-home lessons is that low-tech systems are a good passive defense against high-tech cyberattacks (aka, 'going autistic'). From the linked Nov 30 Economist article, "Lessons From Russia's Cyber-War in Ukraine":<p><a href="https://archive.ph/MJP0J" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/MJP0J</a><p>> "Ukrainian resilience was helped, paradoxically, by the primitive nature of many of its industrial-control systems—inherited from Soviet days and not yet upgraded. When, for example, Industroyer hit electrical substations in Kyiv in 2016, engineers were able to reset systems with manual overrides within a few hours."<p>However, that article also makes an unsubstantiated claim:<p>> "The sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September, and missile attacks on Ukraine’s power grid, suggest that the Kremlin’s appetite for risk is growing."<p>It seems fairly obvious that Russia had little to gain from blowing up its own gas pipelines to Europe, while Britain and the USA viewed that as 'a great opportunity' (Blinken) for replacing Russian pipeline gas with tanker LNG. The Swedish/Danish investigation is apparently ongoing, Germany has classified everything, but the goals of the overall economic battle should be obvious: it's all about who gets access to the European energy market.<p>Incidentally, the terms 'black, grey, white' are also used to describe propaganda tactics as used in psychological warfare operations:<p>> "White propaganda: The information is truthful and only moderately biased. The source of the information is cited."<p>> "Grey propaganda: The information is mostly truthful and contains no information that can be disproven. However, no sources are cited."<p>> "Black propaganda: Literally “fake news,” the information is false or deceitful and is attributed to sources not responsible for its creation."<p><a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/psychological-warfare-definition-4151867" rel="nofollow">https://www.thoughtco.com/psychological-warfare-definition-4...</a><p>Almost all of the news we see today, on essentially all important topics, falls into one of the above categories (with social media posts having the most actual 'fake news' content).
How cybercriminals have been affected by the war in Ukraine<p><a href="https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/11/30/how-cybercriminals-have-been-affected-by-the-war-in-ukraine" rel="nofollow">https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2022/11/30/...</a>
TL;DR: Black hats are concentrating more on destruction instead of ransoming data, on both Ukrainian and Russian sides.<p>Nothing about white hats, grey hats is in the article. Single example of black hat weaponization (Conti), without external reference.<p>(ChatGPT?)