Russia launched large-scale cyber war six months before the invasion – Mykhailo Fedorov

Russia launched large-scale cyber-attacks against Ukrainian IT infrastructure six months before the direct military invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

That was stated by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov at the 17th Yalta European Strategy (YES) Annual Meeting "Ukraine: Defending All Our Freedom", organised by YES in partnership with the Victor Pinchuk Foundation.

“Cyber ​​warfare started long before the full-scale invasion. Six months prior to it, large-scale multi-vector cyber-attacks by hacker groups of Russia’s FSB were launched. The aim was to cause maximum damage to our infrastructure and understand how our information systems are built, how they are interconnected, what the level of protection is and so on," said the Minister of Digital Transformation.

Therefore, according to Mykhailo Fedorov, in October-November 2021, Ukraine worked out situations related to countering Russian cyber-attacks and strengthened security measures.

“What has also been of great value is that we have created our own team that has constantly – 24/7 – been testing our systems. That helped us to detect many vulnerabilities of our critical infrastructure by January and prevent further problems,” he added.

According to him, Ukraine has neutralized all attempts by Russian hackers to undermine the operation of the State's critical information resources.

“We have an IT army; there is an Army of Drones project in place; we carry on with launching new services. Today, our critical information infrastructure is stable and we continue investing in it," stated Mykhailo Fedorov.