Russian military hackers are targeting the phones of Ukrainian soldiers to steal sensitive information from the battlefield that could help the Russians, the United States and the Five Eyes (Five Eyes), namely Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, warned .
The warning confirms a report by Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, that Russian hackers are trying to hack Android tablets used by the Ukrainian military to plan combat missions.
According to Ukraine’s Security Service, the Russian hackers’ code in question was designed to steal data sent from soldiers’ mobile devices to the Starlink satellite system operated by Elon Musk. Starlink satellites are essential for communications on the battlefield in Ukraine.
It is not yet known how successful the Russian hacker attacks were. The Ukrainian Security Service said it had repelled some of the attacks, but also reported that Russian soldiers were stealing tablets from Ukrainians on the battlefield and pinning codes to them.
“Smartphone malware is particularly insidious because it can give intelligence agencies the physical location of targets,” said John Hultquist, senior analyst at Google-owned security firm Mandiant. “This ability can be very effective on the battlefield.”
The US and its allies have blamed the cyber activity on Russia’s GRU’s notorious hacking unit known as Sandworm, which is also allegedly responsible for attacks in 2015 and 2016 that led to blackouts in Ukraine.
(CNN)
