Martin Fendrych: Russian hackers are attacking the Czech Republic and other Western countries

Even recent hacker attacks against the Czech Republic will probably not be enough for people who stubbornly and blindly defend Russia.

Our Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently published this statement: “The Czech Republic, together with Germany, the European Union, NATO and international partners, fundamentally condemn the activities of the Russian state actor APT28, which has been conducting a long-term cyberespionage campaign in European countries.” APT28 is associated with the Russian military intelligence GRU.”

Director of the National Office for Cyber ​​Security Lukáš Kintr told Seznam Zpráva that his office’s analyzes “clearly point to the state-sponsored group APT28 as a source of cyber attacks and long-term harmful effects against Czech state institutions.” Kintr also confirmed the involvement of Russian military intelligence in the group’s actions.

A strange war

According to the German Ministry of the Interior, the attacks were aimed against the governing Social Democracy (SPD), but also against German companies in the fields of logistics, armaments, aviation and computer technology. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock, identified the hacker group APT28 as the culprit.

The question is whether we and other countries are only defending against attacks, or whether we are also actively attacking. This modern, silent, extremely dangerous war takes place in cyberspace, unseen, no bombs falling, no houses collapsing. This is also why some people, either naively or deliberately, claim that we are not at war.

We know little, these are covert actions, but it is certain that counterattacks are carried out by both us and foreign services. This January, the Czech Military Intelligence, which is responsible for the protection of cyberspace, announced that it participated in Operation Dying Ember. The attack was carried out by the National Cyber ​​Operations Center. The Dying Ember action was coordinated by the American FBI and was directed against the APT28 group. It used hacked routers to collect information and also targeted Czech government institutions.

At the end of March, General Václav Žid, deputy head of the Military Intelligence for the technical section, explained to Aktuálně.cz what the APT28 group was about: “When we realize the current position of the Czech Republic vis-à-vis Russia, when we deal with the support of Ukraine, the search for weapons, ammunition or tanks, that is what interests them.” The Russians had been gathering information for several months.

Western countries are therefore actively defending themselves and the Czech Republic is also starting to defend itself. But it’s a strange war because we and our allies don’t seem to be attacking. They are not known to have led a massive hacking attack against Russian infrastructure.

The author is a commentator for Aktuálně.cz