Will Ukraine Face a Massive Cyberattack During the Upcoming Elections?

Ukrainians are heading to the polls on Sunday, March 31, in the first round of elections that will ultimately provide the country's seventh president since the fall of the Soviet Union and its second president-elect since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

As the country seeks closer integration with Europe, Ukrainian officials worry over further aggression from neighboring Russia. And a new type of threat is looming, observers say, with Russian hackers seen as the most important challenge facing the upcoming presidential elections.

Ukraine is no stranger to cyberattacks from Russian hackers. A live database lists Ukraine as one of the most attacked countries in the world, with Russia often ranking among the top cyber offenders in the world. Ukraine has seen repeated attacks on its information systems, its institutions and companies, and more recently on its power grid.

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"(Ukrainians) are acutely aware of the (Russian) threat because they've been subject to ongoing attacks over the years, which have targeted many aspects of Ukrainian infrastructure," says Nikolas Kozloff, an American academic, author and photojournalist who has followed Eastern European affairs.

The upcoming elections may be another opportunity for Russian hackers, as signs of malicious cyber activity have already been noticed in recent months. In February, Politico reported that hacker groups in Russia had been targeting magistrates, government officials and attorneys with emails containing viruses and malware as part of a mass phishing operation. Other sources told Reuters that attackers were using virus-infected greeting cards, shopping invitations and offers for software updates in order to steal passwords and personal information from users.

"Russia intends to carry out unprecedented cyberattacks on the servers of the Central Election Commission and district election commissions of Ukraine on the day of the presidential election in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the process," the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine said in a report released on March 27.

Eastern and Central European countries have seen numerous cyberattacks, with officials in Estonia and Georgia accusing Russia of being behind years of attacks on their institutions. In 2007, in fact, Estonia became the first country in the world to experience a nationwide cyberattack.

The relocation of a Soviet-era memorial in Tallinn, the Estonian capital, resulted in public protests and several waves of coordinated distributed service attacks. Although no data were compromised, the attackers sent large amounts of web traffic to overwhelm systems in an attempt to take them offline. At the peak of these attacks, 58 Estonian websites were offline at once, including those of the government, most newspapers and banks, says Arnaud Castaignet, head of international public relations for the e-residency program of Estonia.

In 2016, reports showed that Russian-backed hackers interfered with the state election system in Georgia. Years earlier in 2008, the website of then-President Mikheil Saakashvili was hit by a series of attacks that made it inaccessible. The national bank's website, as well as parliament's, were also attacked and displayed images comparing Saakashvili to the former Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, The Washington Post reported.

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Countries such as Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic also have reported cyber incidents that they say are tied to Russia. In Ukraine, Russian hackers attempted to publish false election results in 2014, when a pro-Russian hacker group attacked the website of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission and modified the website to declare an ultra-right candidate to be the winner.

"Russia has engaged in overt and covert aggression directed at Ukraine, whether on the field or in the cyber battlefield," regional analyst Radu Magdin says. Moscow, he says, has always considered Ukraine an "artificial country."

Countries have responded by putting in place stronger cyber defense strategies and partnerships. Estonia, for instance, has created intrusion-detection and protection systems, and signed agreements on developing training and cooperation in cybersecurity with Austria, Luxembourg, South Korea and NATO. Estonia is now home to the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence and the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice.

Often praised for its digital infrastructure, the small Baltic country is also one of Ukraine's advisers on cybersecurity. The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports the Estonian-Ukrainian development cooperation program "Resilient Ukraine 2018-2020," put together by the Tallinn-based International Centre for Defense and Security.

"This program is about developing human capacity for cyber and informational resilience at regional level of governance in east and southern Ukraine," Castaignet says. "Among other things, it includes training Ukrainians on practical hands-on skills related to cybersecurity, strategic communication and psychological defence."

What's more, when it comes to cybersecurity issues, governments in the EU share technology and experience, particularly about designing trustworthy election systems, he says: "Election legitimacy depends on more than just technical security, so preventing, detecting and mitigating the effects of cyberattacks is very important, but together with media literacy and a healthy public debate."

Despite warnings, some analysts don't view the situation on Sunday as bleak, and say a full-scale Russian attack on Ukraine this weekend is less likely.

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"Russians may be realizing that an actual attack on the day of elections may be too much and stir an even greater outrage from the international community," Magdin says.

In addition, the voting system in Ukraine seems a bit problematic to hack as it still relies on paper ballots. Upon counting the votes, though, the results need to be sent out electronically to another facility, Kozloff says, so this might be a target for Russian interference.

In the end, a cyberattack might not be the best path for the results Russia seeks.

"It might actually be easier if Russia employed more old-school means, such as paying off politicians or just funnel dark money to candidates," Kozloff adds.

What is not to be excluded, Magdin says, is a massive interference during the second round of votes in Ukraine on April 21, when out of the current 39 candidates, only two will remain in the race.

"The Russians may be trying to help a specific candidate this way," Magdin says. "(Also as) not always (he) who cries wolf is the true enemy of the wolf, expect a competition among candidates on who shouts louder and quicker (about) Russian-related disruption (if it happens)."

Sintia Radu covers international affairs and technology for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter @sintiaradu and send her suggestions and ideas at sradu@usnews.com.