NATO scrambles to knit together a cyberwarfare strategy in face of attacks

OTTAWA – NATO’s supreme commander says Russian cyberwarfare in Ukraine was “exquisitely” carried out — an emerging threat he says leaders of the 28-member alliance will have to grapple with at their meeting in September.

U.S. Gen. Phillip Breedlove, who is visiting Canada this week, says Moscow’s stealth annexation of Crimea included a highly co-ordinated and effective cyber campaign aimed at civilian and military targets.

In the past, tactical warfare involved bombing railways, bridges, factories and command posts to ashes.

These days, servers and websites are hacked and crashed, sometimes grinding the wheels of government and ordinary life to a halt.

Breedlove says the online attacks totally decapitated Crimea’s security command and control structure and isolated it from the rest of Ukraine.

He says NATO has a cyberwarfare policy on which some good work has been done, but more needs to happen as events unfold in Europe.