UK’s cyber defence organisation issues warning about Russian hackers targeting Western critical infrastructure

Belfast: On Wednesday, the UK government’s cyber defence organisation issued a warning about a growing threat from hackers who support Russia and its conflict with Ukraine to Western essential national assets.

Russian-aligned “hacktivists” have run generally non-lethal internet campaigns that have taken down or damaged well-known public websites. However, according to a warning from the British National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), a division of the eavesdropping spy agency GCHQ, some of those organisations have been actively planning methods to do greater physical harm.

“Some have stated a desire to achieve a more disruptive and destructive impact against western critical national infrastructure, including in the UK,” the NCSC said.

“We expect these groups to look for opportunities to create such an impact, particularly if systems are poorly protected,” said the alert, which was released to the press at a two-day conference hosted by the NCSC and GCHQ in Belfast.

Although such groups are ideologically motivated and align themselves with Russian state interests, they are “not subject to formal state control,” the alert said.

“This makes them less predictable”, it said.

A successful cyberattack on critical national infrastructure such as an energy grid or water supply could be highly destructive, and do serious real-world damage.

The NCSC alert said such attacks, which typically require very high levels of technical skill and resources to carry out, would be “unlikely” to be achieved by hacktivist groups “without external assistance”, but warned that they “may become more effective over time”.

That assistance may already be in place, however.

Among the dozens of highly classified US intelligence documents which were posted online in recent weeks was one marked “Top Secret” that warned a pro-Russia hacking group named “Zarya” had infiltrated networks within Canada’s gas infrastructure.

According to that “Top Secret” document, a copy of which was reviewed by Reuters, the group offered screenshots to officers of Russia’s FSB as proof that they were able to “increase valve pressure, disable alarms, and initiate an emergency shutdown of an unspecified gas distribution station”.

Reuters has not independently verified the document’s authenticity. A number of countries have questioned the veracity of some of the documents, including Britain, which said there was “a serious level of inaccuracy” in the information.

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