The Russian Federation’s willingness to engage in offensive cyber operations has caused enormous harm, including massive financial losses, interruptions to the operation of critical infrastructure, and disruptions of crucial software supply chains. In this blog we discuss the Russian hacker ecosystem that has fueled this infamous global presence.
Yandex Survives Record DDoS Attack From New Meris Botnet
A cyber attack on Russian tech giant Yandex's servers in August and September was the largest known distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack in the history of the internet. "Our experts did manage to repel a record attack of nearly 22 million requests per second (RPS). This is the biggest known attack in the history of the internet," Yandex said in its statement.
Hacker Profiles: United States
The United States remains by far the world’s most cyber-capable nation with no major competitors for the title. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think tank, released a 182-page report that reviews the cyber capabilities of 15 of the world’s biggest players in hacking and digital defense and put the USA in its own category.
Hacker Profile: Anonymous
Nation-state Hacker Profile: Iran
Iran started heavily investing in its cyber operations program following the Stuxnet attack (malware that sabotaged the machinery running nuclear enrichment centrifuges) in 2010. Since then, Iran has become a very sophisticated cyber threat able to target critical national infrastructure, financial institutions, education establishments, manufacturers and more.
White House Cyber Summit
On Wednesday August 25, President Joe Biden gathered with industry leaders to issue a call to action on cybersecurity and make concrete announcements to bolster the nation’s cyber infrastructure. The high-profile meeting brought together CEOs from the education, energy, finance, insurance and tech sectors, featuring companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America.