lead centered=”no”In-depth research on Russia’s Sandworm hacking group shows broad capabilities and scope to disrupt anything from critical infrastructure to political campaigns in any part of the world./lead

Speakers at this year’s CyberwarCon conference dissected a new era of cyber warfare, as nation-state actors turn to a host of new advanced persistent threat (APT) strategies, tools and tactics to attack adversaries and spy on domestic dissidents and rivals. The highest profile example of this new era of nation-state digital warfare is a Russian military intelligence group called Sandworm, a mysterious hacking initiative about which little has been known until recently. The group has nevertheless launched some of the most destructive cyberattacks in history.

Wired journalist Andy Greenberg has just released a high-profile book about the group, which he said at the conference is an account of the first full-blown cyberwar led by these Russian attackers. He kicked off the event with a deep dive into Sandworm, providing an overview of the mostly human experiences of the group’s malicious efforts.

Sandworm first emerged in early 2014 with an attack on the Ukrainian electric grid that “was a kind of actual cyberwar in progress,” Greenberg said. The grid operators in Ukraine watched helplessly as “phantom mouse attacks” appeared on their screens while Sandworm locked them out of their systems, turned off the back up power to their control rooms, and then turned off electricity to a quarter-million Ukrainian civilians, the first ever blackout triggered by hackers.

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