Ines Kagubare

Sat, May 14, 2022, 6:52 PM·5 min read

Finland and Sweden’s move to join NATO has raised concerns about potential cyber retaliation from Russia, which sees the expansion of the alliance as a direct threat.

While it is too early to judge how Russia might try to use its cyber capabilities against Finlad, Sweden or other NATO members, including the U.S., experts said it will likely launch unsophisticated and small-scale cyberattacks as a form of protest against the expansion.

Such attacks would not have the severity of cyber efforts Moscow launched against Ukraine amid the Russian invasion of that country.

“I think it’s unlikely that Russia will launch the types of cyberattacks against Finland and Sweden like it did with Ukraine, primarily because the aims are different,” said Jason Blessing, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Blessing said that since Russia has no intention, at least for the moment, to invade Finland or Sweden, it may use different cyber tactics than it did with Ukraine to get its message across.

He added that it’s likely that Russia will launch unsophisticated types of attacks including website defacement and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks to disrupt its enemies’ networks rather than starting a full-scale cyber warfare.

“[Attacks] that essentially represent a protest against their requested membership to NATO,” Blessing said.

Russia isn’t happy about the prospect of Russia and Sweden joining NATO, and earlier this week vowed to take “retaliatory steps” should Finland go through with plans to join the 30-nation military organization.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sees NATO’s expansion as a direct threat. Ukraine’s talk of joining NATO was a part of Moscow’s justification of its invasion.

The fact that Finland is now seeing to join NATO is also an illustration of how Moscow’s war has backfired badly.