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Brad Smith: Russia's war in Ukraine started on Feb 23 in cyberspace
Weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Microsoft was already helping the Ukrainians defend their cyberspace against Russian hackers, for instance by moving the government's physical servers into the cloud to avoid destruction by Russian missiles.
In the virtual world, like on the battlefield, "you've gotta disperse your defensive assets so they're not vulnerable to a single attack," Microsoft President Brad Smith says in a Global Stage livestream discussion at the World Economic Forum in Davos, "Crisis in a digital world," hosted by GZERO in partnership with Microsoft.
Then came defending Ukraine against Russian cyberattacks.
In cyberspace, Smith says the war really started on February 23, a day before Russia's land invasion, when Microsoft noticed some 300 coordinated attacks trying to take down Ukrainian government websites and banks via Microsoft's own data centers in Seattle.
Still, it worked. Why? Because "so far in this war, defense has proven to be stronger [than] offense, frankly, in almost every category, but especially when it comes to cyberspace."
Watch more of this Global Stage discussion: "Crisis in a digital world"
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Russian hackers' arrests timing likely just coincidence, says Ukraine analyst
Russia recently arrested 14 hackers from REvil, a ransomware gang involved in last year's cyberattack against the Colonial Pipeline in the US.
Some think it was a gesture by Vladimir Putin to deescalate tensions with the US over Ukraine. But analyst Alina Polyakova tells Ian Bremmer she doesn't buy it.
It's more likely, she says, that the hackers did something to irritate the Russians.
“When people see strategy in something that the Kremlin does, I usually see circumstantial reasons and coincidence, and maybe some incompetence here and there," Polyakova explains. "I think these were two separate events.”
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Will Putin invade Ukraine?
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Will there be a decisive US response to Russian cyber attacks?
Marietje Schaake, International Policy Director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center, Eurasia Group senior advisor and former MEP, discusses trends in big tech, privacy protection and cyberspace:
After an attempted hack of a Republican National Committee contractor, is cybersecurity at a breaking point between the US and Russia?
Well, that breaking point has been a long time coming. There was the attempt to manipulate the 2016 elections and now we see a series of ransomware attacks that are escalating. So the question is, what the US can do to decisively change the calculation on the Russian side? Making clear that there will be sanctions and other consequences that hurt should be a start. But it will only be credible if these promises are followed through and enforced.
Why is China launching cybersecurity probes into US listed Chinese tech companies?
Well, there has been an intensification of regulatory measures vis-a-vis tech companies in China itself. So, steps against Didi fit the arm-wrestling pattern between companies and state agencies. Only now, US and international investors have also been caught up. And of course, it brings back memories of the Trump administration, which launched its own probes into Chinese tech firms. So the question is, who stands to lose most from a tit for tat type back and forth?
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