A Microsoft report said on Wednesday that Russian hackers backed by Moscow had engaged in "strategic espionage" on governments, think tanks, companies and aid groups in 42 countries supporting Kyiv.
“Since the start of the war, Russian targeting (of Ukraine's allies) has been successful 29 percent of the time,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote, with data stolen in at least a quarter of successful network hacks.
"As the coalition of nations joins forces to defend Ukraine, Russian intelligence agencies have intensified network penetration and espionage activities targeting allied governments outside Ukraine," Smith added.
Nearly two-thirds of cyber-espionage targets focused on NATO members, led by the United States, with Poland, the main channel for the flow of military aid to Ukraine, being a close second.
The report stated that the past two months witnessed an increase in escalation against Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Turkey.
The notable exception is Estonia, where Microsoft said it had not detected any Russian hacking of the Internet since Russia's military operations in Ukraine began on February 24.
The company credited Estonia's adoption of cloud computing, where hackers are easy to spot. "There remain significant collective defense vulnerabilities" among some other European governments, Microsoft said, without specifying it.
Half of the 128 organizations targeted are government agencies and 12 percent are nongovernmental agencies, usually think tanks or humanitarian groups, according to the 28-page report. Other targets include telecommunications, energy and defense companies.
Microsoft said Ukraine's cyber defenses "have proven to be stronger" overall than Russia's capabilities in "waves of devastating cyberattacks against 48 distinct Ukrainian agencies and companies".
The report noted that military hackers in Moscow were wary of unleashing devastating data-destroying worms that could spread outside Ukraine, as the Notbitia virus did in 2017.
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- Agencies