Security

Russia telegraphed its intentions to invade Ukraine well ahead of this week’s attack by massing nearly 200,000 soldiers along Ukraine’s borders, and by Vladimir Putin’s increasingly belligerent threats.

Behind the scenes, Russia was doing more than that, including dangerous cyberattacks launched against Ukraine. And as is typically the case in such attacks, Windows was the attack vector.

“We’ve observed destructive malware in systems belonging to several Ukrainian government agencies and organizations that work closely with the Ukrainian government, Tom Burt, Microsoft corporate vice president for customer security and trust, wrote in a blog post in mid-January. “The malware is disguised as ransomware but, if activated by the attacker, would render the infected computer system inoperable.” In a related technical post detailing how the malware works, Microsoft added: “These systems [under cyberattack] span multiple government, non-profit, and information technology organizations, all based in Ukraine.”

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