At the beginning of the February invasion of Ukraine, there was widespread fear that cybercrime would be weaponized against Western organizations, especially given earlier examples of the Russian security services tolerating cybercriminals targeting the West (or even trying to recruit them for service). The US-Russian dialogue on cybercrime, which reportedly led to the arrest of credit-card fraudsters and ransomware affiliates in early 2022, collapsed soon after February 24 The Russian media has hinted repeatedly that either ransomware affiliates or other fraudsters may join Moscow’s offensive cyber operations, but there is no evidence that this has happened yet. ‘Patriotic hacktivists’ have been loud, but not very disruptive.
And yet the war has profoundly changed the Russian-speaking cyber underground.
How the war on Ukraine is reshaping Russia’s digital undergroundRead More
