Russia is attempting to “divide people” in Ireland through social media by creating “mistrust” against the State, a leading security analyst has warned.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) published Ireland's first national cyber emergency plan today, outlining processes to follow in the event of a major cyber-attack.
It comes after a cyberattack on the HSE in 2021 by a Russian cyber group, which led to a forced shutdown of all of the Health Service's IT systems.
On The Pat Kenny Show today, security analyst Declan Power said Russia is attempting to “stoke” unrest in Ireland.
“States like Russia have been active in this jurisdiction, and in others of our European partners, trying to jump on the bandwagon about migration and other areas that are volatile to people,” he said.
“They are stoking it up through concerted actions in online forums and across a series of social media platforms.
“They’re taking advantage of fault lines they’ve identified and they’re maximising their potential. They’re engaging in what we would call - in military terms - force multipliers, in terms of dividing people from the apparatus of their own state and creating mistrust.”
Mr Power said this tactic, in combination with a cyber-attack, could do serious damage in Ireland.
“There are specific targets that are sometimes picked out that are available and that are weak, that have shown vulnerabilities, that have what I would call a ‘demonstrated provocative weakness,’” he said.
“That's all happening against an ongoing backdrop of hollowing out trust in the State and heightening divisions within society.
“That is the simple overview of what the game plan is of totalitarian states like Russia in particular, but they’re not the only ones attacking from inside a country like Ireland.”
Individual responsibility
Mr Power called on the Irish public to take cybersecurity into its own hands.
“If you have a smartphone, you're reliant on the cyber world,” he said.
“Therefore, it's incumbent upon us all to check our cyber hygiene and to take more of an interest in these things and to reduce our vulnerabilities, to be active participants in our security, not reliant on the State telling us how to do everything.
“The State can't do everything for us, as we learned during the pandemic - we have to take individual responsibility.”
The cyberattack on the HSE in 2021 is believed to have cost the State around €100 million.
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Main image: A hacker using a virus to attack software in August 2019. Picture by: Westend61 GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo
