The Lithuanian Ministry of Defense announced the deployment of a European team of cybersecurity experts to help Ukraine against the Russian cyber threat on February 22. Russia, which sent troops to Ukrainian territory the day before, is already very strongly suspected of several cyberattacks against its neighbor’s institutions.
European cybersecurity experts in support of Ukraine
Day after day, the situation between Ukraine and Russia is deteriorating. On February 21 Vladimir Putin recognized the separatist regions to the east of Ukraine, in part of the Donbass. In the aftermath, the Russian president ordered his troops to enter these territories to ” maintain peace “. Faced with this situation, the European Union, the United States, but also Japan and Canada immediately took a series of economic sanctions against the country.
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Lithuania announced more operational assistance, at the request of Ukraine, by activating Cyber Threat Rapid Response Teams (CRRTs). They will be responsible for helping Ukrainian institutions to deal with growing cyber threats “.
In response to #Ukraine request ???????????? are activating LT-led Cyber Rapid Response Team, which will help ??institutions to cope with growing cyber threats. #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/posfmv3rVT
— Lithuanian MOD (@Lithuanian_MoD) February 22, 2022
A CRRT official explained to the BBC that these specialists are composed of different cyber expertise, such as incident response, forensics, vulnerability assessment, in order to be able to react to a variety of scenarios “.
A concrete agreement has yet to be reached with the Ukrainian government to agree on the details of the deployment of the CRRTs. The question of sending personnel on site or not will in particular arise.
Lithuanian Deputy Defense Minister Margiris Abukevičius said by communicated ” It is important for us to show solidarity with Ukraine and provide it with assistance, and the deployment of the cyber rapid response team is one of the objectives of the multinational project led by Lithuania “.
CRRT is an EU program coordinated by Lithuania and involving Poland, Croatia, Estonia, the Netherlands and Romania. It is one of the projects of the “permanent structured cooperation in the field of defence” (PESCO) of the EU. This framework, created in 2017, allows certain Member States to work together on an operational defense project, without necessarily involving all the countries of the Union.
The CRRTs were created in 2019 to enable Member States to “ assist each other to ensure a higher level of cyber resilience and collectively respond to cyber incidents “. The operation in Ukraine will be the first in real conditions for its members.
Russia, specialist in hybrid warfare
As noted by one of the program managers at the BBC ” cyber measures are an important part of Russia’s hybrid toolkit “. The United States and the United Kingdom only days ago attributed a cyberattack to Russia. It had hit the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in early February.
In January, another cyberattack took down the sites of dozens of Ukrainian government agencies. Russia, or its satellite ally Belarus were already suspected. Now that the conflict is heating up, we can expect more such events against Ukraine. The CRRT experts will not be too many.