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Ukrainian authorities are collecting digital information from battlefields and war-torn Ukrainian towns since Russia invaded the country last February, said FBI Special Agent Alex Kobzanets, who previously served as the agency’s Legal Attaché in Ukraine.
“Collecting data, analyzing data, processing data is what the FBI has experience with,” Kobzanets said at the RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco.
The work included investigating cellphone messages, conducting forensic analysis of DNA samples and analyzing body parts collected off the battlefield, he said.
“The next step is to work with the US national service provider and transfer that information … to get user information and possibly geolocation information,” Kobzanets added.
The work reflects deepening cooperation between the United States and Ukraine on the cyber front, where Russia has been a common adversary.
The Russian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The agent added that for the past year and a half, the FBI had been working to help Ukraine identify Russian collaborators and spies operating inside Ukraine, as well as Russian forces operating outside Kiev at the time of the invasion.
U.S. security firms and officials have been Ukraine’s main partners in defending itself against Russian cyberattacks, which Ukraine has fought since at least 2015.
Illia Vitiuk, head of the Cybersecurity Department of the Ukrainian Security Service, said that while the number of Russian attacks on Ukraine had increased over the past few years, they had become more targeted in recent months.
“It is difficult to prove who is responsible in a criminal case,” Vitiuk said. “It’s very important to us to get as much information as possible about Russian cybercriminals … because we collect all this information and use it in our criminal cases.”
“We do believe this case of cyber war crimes is new,” he added. “This is where we see the first full-scale cyber warfare.”
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