Sandworm - A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

The summer of 2017 witnessed what is believed to have been the most devastating cyberattack the world has ever seen, with Ukraine as its chief victim. Less clear: who carried out this massive attack, and under whose orders?

In Sandworm, Andy Greenberg, a senior writer at WIRED, follows the trail of NotPetya, the malware that crippled significant portions of Ukraine’s infrastructure. In the midst of Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine, Greenberg found that Ukraine was being used as a testing ground for the Kremlin’s newest cyberwar techniques—and that the most aggressive of those attacks were being carried out by a group of Russian hackers known as Sandworm, the same ones would eventually unleash NotPetya onto the world. Greenberg examines how the Kremlin has deployed such groups to attack critical infrastructure across the globe, targeting everyone from civilians to governments.

Future Tense and New America's Cybersecurity Initiative met on November 6, 2019 for a conversation with Andy Greenberg and Lily Hay Newman, both senior writers at WIRED, and New America’s Peter Warren Singer on the Kremlin’s global offensive and the blurring of lines between physical and digital conflict.

Speakers included Andy Greenberg, Senior writer, WIRED and Author of Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers and Peter Warren Singer, Strategist and senior fellow, New America and Co-author of LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media. Moderated by Lily Hay Newman, Senior writer, WIRED.