John Ayim
A new analysis published on Thursday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) suggests that Russia, not China, has been the world’s most serious cyber aggress8or since 2013, and Ukraine its most frequent victim.
Even as Russia has begun its invasion of Ukraine and despite Kremlin-backed denial-of-service attacks against Ukraine in recent weeks, IISS researchers argue Russia is unlikely to deploy its full cyber arsenal against the country, likely in fear of in-kind retaliation from its western allies.
In the IISS report, Great-power offensive cyber campaigns: experiments in strategy, the authors provide an assessment of ten offensive cyber campaigns conducted by the US, Russia and China.
Greg Austin, the lead author and IISS Senior Fellow for Cyber, Space and Future Conflict commented on the uncertain resolve of the great powers to choose military cyber-attacks over traditional means of war:
“Despite these countries having extensive capabilities to launch offensive cyber campaigns, we found that their leaders are yet to demonstrate high confidence in the strategic potential of such operations,” the report read.
“Russia has launched many cyber-attacks on Ukraine. But even as the Ukraine crisis escalates further, Russia is unlikely to unleash the full power of its cyber sabotage operations. At the same time, we can be certain that resistance efforts against Russia, either from Ukrainian actors or foreign governments, will also include cyber-attacks on Russian targets,” it added.