State backed cyber war is on the rise again: CyberCube

Nation states are becoming more proficient and more aggressive in their use of cyber warfare, according to Michael Rogers, a retired admiral and a board member of CyberCube, the cyber risk analytics specialist.

Speaking at the NetDiligence Cyber War Webinar Series, Rogers noted there had been a lull in state activity following NotPetya in 2017, a cyber-attack that was allegedly orchestrated by the Russian government. Now, however, state sponsored activity is on the rise again, he said, with the SolarWinds attack in December 2020 and the attack on Microsoft Exchange in March 2021 both bearing the hallmarks of state involvement.

Rogers, a former director of the National Security Agency and Commander of US Cyber Command, said the boundaries between nation states and criminal gangs were blurring, with some states employing organised cyber criminals to launch attacks on their behalf.

Rogers said: “The Russians in particular, often tend to use criminal groups to engage in state-associated activity. This proliferation of tools is creating a challenging environment.”

Rogers warned that the impact of COVID-19 is making traditional approaches to cyber security redundant in some cases, with more people working from home. “We're not all sitting behind a central security stack right now. Now we're dispersed,” he explained. “We've blurred the lines between what is business infrastructure and what is personal infrastructure. The bottom line is the attack surface is just proliferated as a result.”

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