GCHQ head says the relationship between the Kremlin and proxy groups is changing.
British Intelligence officials are “increasingly concerned about growing links between the Russian intelligence services and proxy groups to conduct cyber-attacks.”
Speaking at the NCSC CyberUK conference in Birmingham, Anne Keast-Butler, director of signals and cyber intelligence at GCHQ, warned that Russia’s partnership with criminal groups was also contributing to “suspected physical surveillance and sabotage operations.”
According to the Record, Keast-Butler said the relationship between the Kremlin and these proxies was changing, saying that previously Russia created the right environments for these groups to operate, “but now they are nurturing and inspiring these non-state cyber operations.”
“The Russia threat is acute and globally pervasive. It requires constant vigilance and collaboration to defeat it. We can see that Putin has not given up his maximalist goal of subjugating the population of Ukraine,” said the GCHQ director.
Written by
Dan Raywood is a B2B journalist with 25 years of experience, including covering cybersecurity for the past 17 years. He has extensively covered topics from Advanced Persistent Threats and nation-state hackers to major data breaches and regulatory changes.
He has spoken at events including 44CON, Infosecurity Europe, RANT Forum, BSides Scotland, Steelcon and the National Cyber Security Show, and served as editor of SC Media UK, Infosecurity Magazine and IT Security Guru. He was also an analyst with 451 Research and a product marketing lead at Tenable.
