Russia collected data on all Ukrainians before the invasion - Mandiant

According to the US cybersecurity group Mandiant, even before the military offensive, Russia launched a large-scale cyberespionage operation in Ukraine to prepare attacks and identify the entire population.

"We saw Russia's desire to classify and recover all information about Ukrainian citizens by stealing data, even on objects such as city halls, universities, schools... The goal was to catalog all citizens: their surnames, their first names, their ages, their addresses, the equivalent of a social security number, the number of children," the Mandiant expert David Grote told RFI.

"We have seen that Russians have been biased since 2014-2015. We saw traces at a number of sites that indicated that the attacker was present in a dormant mode," explained  Mandiant's chief regional expert, during a conference at the International Cybersecurity Forum in Lille.

In support of the physical attack, cybercriminals from Russia massively used "vipers" – software that erases all data, targeting electrical, railroad and communication networks. According to him, these attacks, carried out by organized groups, have now resumed.

Mandiant also noted Belarusian hackers, as well as "an overlooked Chinese presence, especially for disinformation."

Background. As a reminder, Ukrainian hackers recently hacked into the account of a Z-volunteer who was raising money for the Russian army and ordered sex toys for the entire amount.