How An Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab For Cyberwar

When the nuclear bomb was first developed, it was only a matter of months before it was first used in combat. Hiroshima and Nagasaki heralded the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way large wars would be fought, and the destruction that it would cause was plain for everyone to see.

And while the nuclear age has continued for more than 70 years, the world is entering a new paradigm in inter-state conflict — Cyberwar.

The world is more networked than ever before. Almost every single critical piece of infrastructure that people rely on in their day-to-day lives is connected in one way or another to the Internet. Until now this infrastructure, which lies at the heart of nation states, was well defended, out of range of all but the most sophisticated of physical weapons.

But in 2017, every single piece of this complex system is vulnerable.

Of course, the world has not yet seen its cyber-Hiroshima. A cyberattack has yet to do any real, lasting damage to a country. But, continuing with this metaphor, it has seen its 'Trinity test' in Ukraine. There, hackers linked to the Russian state have mounted successively more sophisticated attacks against the country’s power grid, causing huge blackouts in several regions of the country. These attacks are seen not merely as part of Ukraine’s ongoing war against Russia, but also as something more disturbing — a testing ground for future cyberwarfare.

This article by Andy Greenberg for Wired shows the technical sophistication of these state-sponsored cyber-warriors and goes into great detail about the damage they could cause. Concerningly, it also points to evidence as to Russia’s real target for these weapons: the United States.