Ukraine’s top Cyber Official Pays Unexpected Visit to a Black hat Convention in the U.S
A Ukrainian top cyber official paid a surprise visit to a ‘Black Hat’ hackers convention held in Las Vegas.
According to Reuters, Victor Zhora, the deputy head of Ukraine’s State Special Communications Service addressed the room full of security experts. On Wednesday, he said that the number of cyber threats to have hit Ukraine tripled since Russia’s invasion in February. He added at the annual conference that the war is the biggest challenge for the world since World War 2.
The Black Hat Convention holds annually in the USA. The event provides security consulting, training, and briefings to hackers about developments in the cyberspace.
Russian cyber groups such as Killnet and Conti ransomware group before their shutdown devastated Ukrainian Infrastructure. Although the Ukrainian IT Army stepped up to fight for Ukraine, most of the attacks couldn’t be countered.
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Zhora said Ukraine faced several huge incidents in cyberspace from the end of March to the beginning of April. The also discovered the industroyer2 malware which could manipulate equipment in electrical utilities to control the flow. Russian hackers also hit Ukraine with a cyberattack that took down regional satellite internet service.
Since the beginning of the year, Ukraine had detected over 1,600 major cyber incidents, Zhora said. In an interview, he revealed that Microsoft, Amazon, and Google had offered pro bono cloud computing services to the Ukrainian government.
The service is to help Ukraine as it moves its data out of the country to prevent damages from Russian bombs and missiles. He added that several data centers across multiple European countries hold Ukraine’s data archives.
Lastly, he explained that it him 2 days to get to Las Vegas and there is no time to waste on other activities. “It would be inappropriate for me to gamble here while Ukrainian soldiers are defending our land,” he said.
