Cyber warfare is really reaching a new peak in Ukraine, and not just the more-traditional cyberattacks like this. The target is of note; the drones themselves are the thing that's setting this war apart from all of the primarily human powered wars of the past centuries.
Drones have revolutionized reconnaissance, sabotage, and munitions interception. Relative to their material cost, they can be terrifically destructive, and with the advances in image recognition in the past decade some are able to operate even when affected by electronic signal jamming. This is some very cyberpunk shit going on right now.
This was obviously a very high-value target, and Ukraine has shown themselves again to be masters of asymmetric warfare: taking out a sizable chunk of Russia's long range bombers using drones smuggled across Russia, and now impacting one of the centers of Russia's drone manufacturing. It is difficult to see how the war will end, but it is clear that Ukraine is not about to stop fighting.
In the book Ministry of the Future, a near-future look at a world dealing with devastating climate change, wars become somewhat obsolete because drones get so good it's always possible to kill someone anywhere in the world. The smallest faction can easily kill the leader of any country. It's an interesting thought. I don't recommend the book, one of those thought experiments with lots of interesting ideas with not enough story.
It's fallacious to assume that defenses stop evolving after new weapons come to the fore. Some drones are deployed in anti-drone capacities; the war economics becomes balancing how advanced to make the attack drones vs. how cheap the countermeasures are. In Ukraine we've already seen small drones that are able to damage the wings of much larger and more "technically advanced" platforms.
War didn't end the first time man invented the longer spear; defenses adapt.
Some assumptions here. First off, we only have one side of the story to go on. Often this can be embroidered, particularly if there is propaganda value from doing so.
They could be using version control for their software with every developer having all of the software they have developed for their products git-cloned to their development machines. Assuming a modest development team working with version control (who doesn't), then you do have to wonder if they have lost the crown jewels. I suspect not.
It is going to be a similar situation with everything else such as CAD files. People will have local copies because it is quicker to work that way.
As for the company emails and general office files, sure they might have lost lots of that, but that isn't going to be the end of the world.
The website is also part of the company and you would expect the elite hackers to have taken that down but no they have not, that works just fine.
Then there is the product itself. If you have been following the war closely then you will know what drones are in use at a given time. We might not get to know all of the drones as well as the heavy hitters, however, the name of this company is not something that the keenest watcher of the SMO will be familiar with. It is not as if they have shut down Geranium 2 production, is it?
As for yourself, and how you write, is that ChatGPT speaking?
The reason I ask is that we all know about things such as version control so I wonder if there is common sense or ChatGPT going on with your comment.
You're right about this being a one-sided story, but not to suspect ChatGPT - it has none of the hallmarks of AI slop, plus it brings up a couple of reasonable and relevant points. You're only addressing a tiny part of the comment, but the rest stands, in my opinion.
The whole Ukraine situation is an intelligence test. In wartime you never have complete information so it is not like a game of chess where you know what the board is, what the pieces are and the play so far. Some fog of war is expected.
With the hacks that Snowden, Assange and their ilk participated in, we had stuff uploaded somewhere for the world to see. In this way it was self evident that stuff had been exfiltrated.
In this instance we can assume the drone company are going to deny everything. However, if we had some of their trade secrets uploaded somewhere then a data breach could be considered plausible. Or a recorded screen cast of the hack.
However, the intended audience for this story doesn't care about hard evidence, they just need a morale boost, and belief trumps reason on these situations.
My school history teacher taught me how to look at evidence and it is not rocket science. Hence why Ukraine is like an intelligence test nobody thought they needed. If people can't do critical thinking about some war that has been on the news for more than three years, how are they supposed to do science or anything else that needs critical thinking?
Remains to be seen if the lessons of this war extend to other possible wars though.
It is possible that FPV drones are showing up as so important because Russia is committed to a disgusting meat sluice of fodder to achieve its marginal territory gains.
Most countries don’t have the appetite for those kind of losses. Most countries, frankly, don’t have the audacity to set these kinds of war aims.
I predict they won’t matter too much to the war meta. At least not so much as cheap long range jet drones which are also becoming significant here.
Oh my, one thing wars are good at is to get rid off or at least contain such thinking („Russia evil, thus no worry“) to the playgrounds (eg public commentariat): FPV drones are the defining weapon in this war, are used by both sides, and were the defining weapon in other recent conflicts as well (eg Nogorno-Karabach), they are already being picked up and used as weapons by Mexican-Cartels (all former military).
Seems like drone warfare is just democratizing what e.g the US has in capabilities with their precision munitions already, in a perhaps less capable but far cheaper manner. Put it in other words if this was the US directy engaging russia, it would probably be tomahawk missiles or something along those lines just like we’ve seen last few decades, vs a sort of Air Hogs with a bomb.
Drones have revolutionized reconnaissance, sabotage, and munitions interception. Relative to their material cost, they can be terrifically destructive, and with the advances in image recognition in the past decade some are able to operate even when affected by electronic signal jamming. This is some very cyberpunk shit going on right now.
This was obviously a very high-value target, and Ukraine has shown themselves again to be masters of asymmetric warfare: taking out a sizable chunk of Russia's long range bombers using drones smuggled across Russia, and now impacting one of the centers of Russia's drone manufacturing. It is difficult to see how the war will end, but it is clear that Ukraine is not about to stop fighting.