Like a Russian tank arrived in Ukraine on the morning of February 24, the Internet was rocked – and for some, stopped altogether. Ukraine’s major Internet service provider Triolan has been temporarily down, during a power outage mostly affected the northeastern region of Kharkiv — a target of the Russian invasion. According to data from Internet Loss Detection and Analysis (IODA), an internet-connected observatory affiliated with Georgia Tech. Russian-occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk also dropped connection.
Since the beginning of the conflict, was taken care of that Russian-backed hackers could try to disconnect Ukraine’s Internet, the same way they take down the country’s electricity grid in 2015. Since February 23, Russia’s cyber army has been continuously carrying out distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against government websites, overwhelming them with fake traffic to bring them in. offline. (Ukrainian Cyber Warriors) retaliated in kind.) But despite what happened to Triolan, Russia’s chance to make a turn off the internet completely against Ukraine is low.
Internet shutdowns, as a rule, are enacted by governments with the ability to order internet service providers (ISPs) to disconnect, throttle or restrict access to the internet. Outages caused by an external attacker are much more difficult. Russia could try to target DDoS or other cyberattacks on border routers that connect ISPs’ networks to the global internet, said Doug Madory, director of internet analytics at internet measurement firm Kentik. but an attack that can bring down a website can be harder than the time it takes to take down the internet infrastructure. “It wouldn’t really be practical to take the whole country offline with a DDoS attack,” Madory said. “Those routers are pretty powerful. And maybe, if it were easy, they would have done it by now. ”
In short, it’s not impossible: After all, earlier this year an American hacker orchestrated a DDoS attack aimed at take down North Korea’s server. But Ukraine has been resilient in the past to Russian cyberattacks, and its preparedness and sophistication are much higher than that of North Korea. More important, however, is the fact that any attacker will have a large number of targets rather than a vulnerable attacker. Ukraine’s size and geographical location mean it is deeply connected to Europe’s internet of things. A spokesman for the Ukraine Internet Association said that the country has more than 4,900 ISPs as of December 2021; some of them prepared for the crisis, establishing secure links with each other and setting up new redundant network hubs, according to New York Times.
Tanya Lokot, a professor of society and digital media at Dublin City University, said Ukraine’s internet has evolved towards decentralization due to market dynamism, but that has served well. in the past few years. “There is a perception that it is a natural and healthy way to organize the network. When you have multiple traffic exchange points, you have many internet service providers across the country, many mobile phone operators; it just leads to a more reliable system overall,” says Lokot. She contrasts that model with Russia’s own internet, which is dominated by a handful of state-controlled operators and The government is working to separate from the global Internet through a kill switch. “Surname [Russia] is trying to centralize control and on the resiliency of the system, which hurts because it’s much easier to target,” Lokot said.
However, Ukraine’s resilience goes beyond the sheer number of suppliers. If cyberattacks don’t work to bring down the ISP, the Russian military that decides to disconnect Ukraine may decide to attack the connectivity infrastructure by bombing server rooms or severing fiber optic cables. In fact, one possible explanation — if unconfirmed — for Thursday’s outage is Russian bombs damage Triolan’s infrastructure in Kharkiv. But it remains unclear whether more methodical targeting of network equipment will lead to total internet blackouts. According to Vadym Hudyma, a researcher at the digital rights advocacy group Digital Security Lab Ukraine, in Ukraine’s crowded ISP market, all providers have adapted to the team and resolved even the bugs. the smallest technique quickly and efficiently.
