By Dina Temple-Raston
“Just weeks after Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, a representative from the cybersecurity firm Mandiant phoned executives at Naftogaz, Ukraine’s largest state-owned oil and natural gas company, with an unusual offer: Would Naftogaz be open to having Mandiant check their network for bad guys?
Russian hackers have been trying to break into Naftogaz systems for years, so when Mandiant offered to deploy hunt teams for free to see if anything was lurking in their networks, the company executives couldn’t believe their luck.
The thing is, it wasn’t really luck. The offer was part of a broad effort by Western tech companies to help Ukraine protect itself against Russian cyberattacks in a time of war. Dozens of companies from the U.S. cybersecurity, threat intelligence and tech world – from Mandiant to Microsoft – have banded together in a kind of volunteer cyber posse, wading into the middle of the conflict without a pretense of neutrality.
They call themselves the Cyber Defense Assistance Collaboration (CDAC), and it is the brainchild of Greg Rattray, a former chief information security officer at JP Morgan Chase. For months, he has been helping build a kind of public-private partnership to combat destructive cyberattacks. This is the first time he’s speaking in depth about the initiative publicly.”
Listen to the full episode here: https://therecord.media/exclusive-rounding-up-a-cyber-posse-for-ukraine
