EU sees surge in Russian-backed cyberattacks, top security official says

• Destructive digital attacks in the European Union, many of which are linked to Russian-backed groups, have recently doubled down on targeting election-related services.
• ENISA head Juhan Lepassar said there has been a steady increase in geopolitically motivated attacks since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
• The attack techniques are often tested in Ukraine before targeting EU countries and are seen as part of Russia’s digital aggression across Europe.

Destructive digital attacks, often linked to Russia-backed groups, have doubled in the European Union in recent months and are also targeting election-related services, the EU’s cybersecurity chief says.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Juhan Lepassar, head of the European Union Cybersecurity Agency (ENISA), said there has been a steady increase in geopolitically motivated attacks since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.

“The number of hacktivist attacks on European infrastructure – whose main goal is to cause disruption – doubled between the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024,” Lepassar said late Tuesday at the agency’s headquarters in Athens.

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“That’s a pretty big increase,” he said.

Citizens across the 27 EU member states will vote in European Parliament elections from June 6-9, which will also determine the election of the EU’s executive body, the European Commission. Belgian authorities said on Wednesday that police had searched the home of a European Parliament official and his office in the parliament building in Brussels over allegations of Russian interference. With elections also coming up in the United States, Britain and many other countries, security officials are on high alert for the threat of sabotage funded by rival forces.

Over the past seven months, ENISA has led exercises and intensive consultations aimed at strengthening the resilience of EU election-related institutions. In its 2023 annual report, the agency noted a sharp increase in ransomware attacks and incidents targeting public institutions.

Lepassard said that although the attack techniques were not always successful, they were often tried out in Ukraine before being expanded to other EU countries.

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“This is part of Russia’s war of aggression, which Russia is fighting physically in Ukraine, but also digitally across Europe,” he said.

Experts have warned that artificial intelligence tools are being used at an accelerating pace and on a larger scale to target Western voters using misleading or false information, including hyper-realistic video and audio clips known as deepfakes.

“Cybersecurity agencies in member states have also highlighted that AI-enabled disinformation and manipulation pose a major threat,” Lepassard said.

His comments echoed a warning issued this month by US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that technological advances are enabling more countries and groups to launch effective disinformation campaigns.

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U.S. and European experts are helping security agencies anticipate emerging digital threats and vulnerabilities over the next decade, with ENISA identifying food production, satellite management and self-driving cars as areas needing attention.

Lepassard argues that cybersecurity inevitably needs to become second nature for designers and consumers.

“I believe we have a societal challenge ahead of us to understand digital security in the same way we understand security in our everyday transportation environments,” he said.

“When we’re driving a car, we’re aware of what’s going on around us. We’re paying attention,” he said. “We need to adopt those same behaviors and habits when we’re driving in any digital environment.”