Microsoft: Russian Cyber Attacks Target 42 Ukraine Allies

Microsoft said on Wednesday that Russian hackers started to target wide cyber attacks against Ukraine's allies.

The technology company warned of hackers targeting government computers in NATO member states in particular.

Microsoft added that although their main target is the United States, the company’s experts have discovered cyber attacks on about 128 organizations in 42 countries outside Ukraine.

The Russian hackers have managed to penetrate 29% of the networks that tried to attack it, noting data was compromised in at least a quarter of the successful cyber attacks, according to the company.

At the same time, Microsoft confirmed that Russia has attacked Ukraine’s IT infrastructure with both cyber and missile attacks since Russia’s invasion.

However, the technology company highlighted that Ukraine’s computer systems have proven to be very resilient against such attacks, thanks to large parts to the measures.

Microsoft pointed out that Kyiv’s cyber defenses “have proven stronger” overall than Russia’s capabilities in “waves of destructive cyberattacks against 48 distinct Ukrainian agencies and enterprises.”

Moscow’s military hackers have been cautious not to unleash destructive data-destroying worms that could spread outside Ukraine, as the NotPetya virus did in 2017, the report noted.

The company said Ukraine has also set an example in data safeguarding. The country went from storing its data locally on servers in government buildings a week before the Russian invasion to dispersing that data in the cloud, hosted in data centers across Europe.

Using artificial intelligence tools, Microsoft said, it estimated that “Russian cyber influence operations successfully increased the spread of Russian propaganda after the war began by 216 percent in Ukraine and 82 percent in the United States."