Over the past several weeks, the Russia Ukraine cyber activity has escalated substantially, including significant increases in cyber attacks. Beginning on Feb. 15, a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks commenced. These attacks have continued over the past week, impacting both the Ukrainian government and banking institutions. On Feb. 23, a new variant of wiper malware named HermeticWiper was discovered in Ukraine. Shortly after, a new round of website defacement attacks were also observed impacting Ukrainian government organizations. While these attacks are within Ukraine, our expectation is that similar attacks will be used against additional targets should the situation continue to escalate.
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has asked industry to put their “Shields Up” to prepare for a cyberattack that could disrupt, disable, or destroy U.S. critical infrastructure. CISA also recommends all organizations – regardless of size – adopt a heightened posture when it comes to cybersecurity and protecting their most critical assets.
Join Ryan Olson, VP of Unit 42 Threat Intelligence, and Jen Miller-Osborn, Deputy Director for Unit 42 Threat Intelligence to learn:
- Key details and analysis of attacks launched to date
- Assessment of how future attacks may unfold in the coming weeks
- Recommended mitigations
- What Palo Alto Networks products will do to protect your organization from these types of threats.
Jen Miller-Osborn
Deputy Director of Threat Intelligence for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks
Jen Miller-Osborn is the Deputy Director of Threat Intelligence for Unit 42 at Palo Alto Networks. Her focus is detecting, identifying and differentiating between cyber espionage and cyber crime actors and groups.
For more than 10 years, Jen has worked in cyber threat intelligence and served as a subject matter expert to multiple U.S. federal agencies. She has influenced national cyber security policies and regularly briefed at all levels of government.
A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Jen is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. She has several degrees and technical certifications, including a Master of Science degree in information technology from the University of Maryland.
