NATOVET Radar Weekly 19-26 July 2022

On the NATOVET Radar Weekly

19-26 July 2022

The Youngest Domain: Cyberspace

U.S. Cybersecurity Policy Has Changed Since the Colonial Pipeline Attack

26.07.2022 More than a year ago, a ransomware attack made the news across the nation. The Colonial Pipeline Company announced on May 7, 2021, that the DarkSide Ransomware-as-a-Service group, based in eastern Europe, had hit it.

Colonial Pipeline paid $4.5 million in ransom to restore its compromised systems. The DarkSide recovery tools were so slow that the company ended up mostly using its business continuity tools instead.

Takeaways for Businesses

DarkSide hackers used an old password to access Colonial’s IT networks through a VPN without multi-factor authentication. How well this simple attack worked reveals five points that should be top of mind today:

·????????All passwords must expire. Businesses need good password management in general, and to sunset passwords in particular. It’s not enough to add new, strong passwords.

·????????Passwords aren’t a good idea. To rely on passwords for security is to rely on people. That leaves you open to human error, insider threats, and social engineering. The sooner we can move beyond passwords, the better.

·????????Multi-factor authentication is a must. Any single-factor authentication scheme represents a nearly open door to cyber attackers.

·????????Know your air gaps. Where are the air gaps (if any) between IT and OT systems? Know what your network segmentation looks like.

·????????Zero trust works. Perimeter security is a thing of the past. Getting inside the perimeter, through a virtual private network or any other means, creates massive vulnerability. Strong zero trust would have thwarted this attack. Even if an attacker managed to defeat user authentication protocols, they wouldn’t be able to progress further into the device and software. Security Intelligence

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NATO: Cyberdefence

To compete with China, NATO allies must get tech experts on board

26.07.2022 Military technology is evolving — and as countries such as China advance in areas like artificial intelligence and hypersonics, NATO members are playing catch-up. In the past, governments would have turned to defence manufacturers to find the most cutting-edge kit, but today tech innovation is more often found in the start-up community.

If the tech community had a sophisticated understanding of the threats western countries face, and the role of the armed forces, they’d come up with ideas no government official would have thought of.

Of course, tech entrepreneurs would not be mere students: they have expertise in a world that most government officials struggle to keep up with. If students were able to share their knowledge of areas such as quantum and blockchain, then national security training for the tech community would be a win-win. Financial Times

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Russia-Ukraine War: Putin is weaponizing everything.

Fear and suspicion haunt Putin’s Black Sea grain deal with Ukraine

22.07.2022 A U.N.-backed plan to allow Ukrainian food exports to navigate Russia’s Black Sea blockade has raised hopes that the worst ravages of a global food crisis can be avoided.

Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian MP representing Odesa, was cautiously optimistic but said he expected Putin would eventually “try to make a bottleneck” of the sea corridor “to make it slow and vulnerable."

That would enable Russia "at any moment" to restart the blockade, Goncharenko said in an interview after meetings with U.S. lawmakers in Washington on Thursday. “Putin is weaponizing everything. So he will definitely weaponize this.”

But privately, key Western officials doubt that grain will start moving quickly through the new safe corridor. "We’re not holding our breath,” one U.S. official said. An EU official added: “Clearly we need to see grains flow onto international markets to judge success.” politico.eu

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Ukraine can feed the world again. But at what cost?

22.07.2022 The world’s breadbasket is back. Russia and Ukraine signed separate deals with the United Nations and Turkey in Istanbul today that will unblock commercial exports from three southern Ukrainian ports including Odesa—where more than twenty million tons of grain have been held up amid Russia’s invasion of its neighbor. It’s a promising development far beyond just the Black Sea, allowing countries dependent on Ukrainian grain to breathe a sigh of relief following fears of a mounting global food crisis. But how fragile is this wartime deal? And what did Ukraine really gain?

More broadly, John Herbst, Senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a former US ambassador to Ukraine believes, this deal is a major bright spot in a brutal war. “It would be the first time diplomacy has achieved a tangible result since Moscow’s February offensive began.” Atlantic Council

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Russia-Ukraine War: United Nations

The United Nations hasn’t been useless on Ukra?ne

21.07.2022 The invasion of Ukraine has clarified the United Nations’ remaining virtues as well as its weaknesses. Even in an increasingly divided and competitive strategic environment, the United Nations offers a stage for major powers to vent their grievances — and a channel for them to find a few remaining ways to cooperate.

In this light, the United Nations is not quite as hopeless as its critics suggest. The organization has indeed acted as a platform for international public criticism of Russia, brought some aid to victims of the conflict, and helped keep a lid on some other crises that would otherwise be consuming the time of Western policymakers. None of these achievements will bring much comfort to Ukrainian civilians who have borne the full brunt of Moscow’s aggression, but the world would be worse off without them. War on the Rocks

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Focus Point: West Balkans

Europe’s week: EU accession talks begin and Brussels defends sanctions

22.07.2022 In North Macedonia and Albania this week, champagne corks popped – politically speaking.

Both Western Balkan countries- North Macedonia and Albania got closer to their long-term goal of becoming members of the European Union, as the official negotiation process finally started. The two candidates have been waiting for decades.

The reason for the accession talks to start now is that some crucial legal obstacles could be removed soon and, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stressed, both countries put in a lot of work to comply with EU standards.

But there is also another reason. When the EU gave candidate status to Ukraine a few weeks ago, it upended decades of its own enlargement diplomacy, so much so, that pressure was growing not to leave the Balkan countries behind, Albania and North Macedonia.

In other words, the war in Ukraine has, directly and indirectly, forged a stronger democratic identity in Europe and the feeling that those like-minded countries need to close ranks against an aggressive Russia.

Brussels hits back on sanctions

At the same time, it strongly rejected the notion that it is the EU sanctions that have caused energy prices to go through the roof and create misery for households and businesses, as the bloc's chief diplomat,?Josep Borrell, explained. euronews.

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Russia-Ukraine War: New Alliances

Sergey Lavrov tours Africa amid diplomatic isolation- A Must Read

25.07.22 Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is visiting Africa as part of a push by Moscow to strengthen ties with the continent. Russia aims to confront the West by building its reputation as a defender of Africa. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is on an Africa trip this week. His itinerary includes Egypt, the Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Ethiopia.

A link between foreign training and coups

Mali, Sudan, Chad, Guinea Conakry and Guinea Bissau have also experienced coups in the past year. One thing they all have in common: Most of the soldiers behind the coups had received military training sponsored by Russia.

A few months earlier, in 2019, the first-ever Russia-Africa Economic Forum was held in Sochi, with many big names in African politics in attendance. Russia used the occasion to elegantly tout its track record in Africa. By then it had made a name for itself as an ally of multiple nations as they battled relentless insurgencies: In 2018, Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania all appealed to Moscow for help combating the so-called Islamic State and al Qaeda. dw.com