This report aims to provide an overview of the current landscape of hacktivism and a risk assessment of this form of cyber criminality for Western organizations.

QuoIntelligence assesses that hacktivism poses a Low-Medium risk to Western organizations, with layer 7 DDoS attacks as the main method of attacks used by pro-Russia hacktivist groups due to the ease of its deployment and its effectiveness.

Based on QuoIntelligence collected data, most targeted entities by pro-Russia hacktivist groups are governmental organizations and information technology companies.

 

Financial entities as well as companies in the transportation sector are also regularly targeted. Medium size enterprises are more numerous among their targets as they are more likely to have weaker protection for DDoS attacks.

Pro-Russia hacktivist groups will likely (60 – 70%) remain active in the framework of the war in Ukraine, with some groups probably engaging in Russian state-sponsored operations. Their durability beyond the conflict will likely depend on their utility for Russia’s intelligence agencies.