Minutes after hostilities started, Britain organized a multimillion-pound package to thwart alleged Russian cyber activities
On Tuesday, the UK government admitted that British cybersecurity specialists had begun working covertly to aid Ukraine in fending off alleged Russian hacker strikes almost as soon as Moscow began its military action in late February.
According to UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, Britain originally deployed a previously unannounced support package to the tune of £6.35 million ($7.32 million) in an effort to defend Kiev’s crucial national infrastructure from cyberattacks. The Ukraine Cyber Programme of the UK conducted the operations.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is helping the Foreign Office manage the scheme, which saw British experts rush to defend Ukraine “within 35 minutes of Russian forces reaching the border,” the Times reports.
According to the administration, the experts “offered incident response support” to Ukrainian state enterprises, shielding them from “destructive cyberattacks” and preventing bad actors from obtaining sensitive information. They improved the digital infrastructure of Ukraine as well as gave Kiev “frontline cyber security gear and software.”
According to the British government, the program had not been made public until now to protect its “operational security.”
In an interview to Sky News, Leo Docherty, a junior Foreign Office minister, stressed that without British help, the havoc wreaked by alleged Russian hackers would have been “very significant,” adding the UK has also bolstered its own cyber defenses due to what he called “a very significant cyber threat” from Moscow.
Commenting on the effort, Cleverly noted that the UK’s support for Ukraine “is not limited to military aid,” vowing that “we will ensure that the Kremlin is defeated in every sphere: on land, in the air and in cyber space.”
The British government claims that Russia significantly ramped-up its offensive cyber activities against Ukraine after full-scale hostilities broke out between the two countries in late February. Moscow has repeatedly dismissed allegations that it has carried out cyberattacks.
In April, Ukrainian officials admitted that Kiev had itself mounted hundreds of such attacks against Russian and Belarusian enterprises, banks and institutions.
Source of the news: https://www.rt.com
