The United States says a digital military alliance with Ukraine has come under Russian surveillance

The renowned Ukrainian Digital Army, which brings together experts and stakeholders around the world in digital operations against Russian structures and websites, is not much respected by the US government. According to Robert Joyce, director of cyber security at the NSA (National Security Agency), operatives’ activities make it difficult to track potential attacks on US infrastructure.

The speech came during a speech at the RSA conference, one of the world’s most prestigious cyber security events. According to Joyce, the major challenge in the early days of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was to work on cooperation between countries and international organizations so that potential attacks against allies could be identified and minimized before causing damage. According to Joyce, there was a significant increase in attacks and espionage operations.

As the NSA director sees progress in alliances and information sharing, with everyone trying to prepare for possible attacks, Ukraine’s digital military has become an additional challenge. “Although we wanted to root them out, launching attacks caused problems in surveillance and made it difficult to follow standards. [para cooperação internacional]”Joyce explained.

The main obstacle, he pointed out, was to differentiate the scale of the attacks carried out by the activists – which he called “cyber watchers” – eventually coming from Russia or its allies. Thus came one of the mottos of surveillance during conflict, when those involved in the mission acted on the principle of “expect fear and worse”.

Fortunately, for him, there were no significant attacks expected by the US government, especially against the country’s essential infrastructure and services. Joyce, on the other hand, viewed the increase in cooperation between countries and institutions as positive, raising the level of alert, which should increase regression and awareness against immediate attacks.

The journalist followed the event in digital form at the invitation of Tenable.