Evolution of the Latest Attack Campaigns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, initiated a new era of cyber war. In response to alleged Russian cyber aggression against Ukraine, Ukraine established the IT Army of Ukraine, recruiting Western hackers volunteering to conduct attacks against Russian targets.
Initially, the cyber aggressions were limited to the two parties involved in the conflict, but soon they extended to additional targets. Pro-Russian hacktivist groups—including NoName057, the Killnet cluster, Anonymous Russia, the Passion group, and others—started attacking targets in countries that were supporting Ukraine. More recently, religious groups such as Anonymous Sudan, Mysterious Team Bangladesh, and others, joined the mix by launching cyber aggressions against targets who insulted Muslims.
These cyberattacks are focused on denial of service and defacement, and they involve hospitals, airports, utilities, government, financial services, and media sites around the world. No one is immune.
Attack tactics started with high-volume network-based flood attacks. Later, they evolved to more sophisticated multi-vector application-level attacks that are hard to detect and mitigate.
OpIsrael and OpsPetir According to an alert published on April 12, DragonForce Malaysia: OpsPetir, DragonForce Malaysia, a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group located in Malaysia, has returned for a third year
with rebranded operations targeting Israel.
