Irish Examiner view: Russia is also waging an online war

The Conti gang said to be based in Russia with links to state security services, has extorted large sums from European and US companies through providing affiliates with malware. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/PA Wire

The scale of the threat posed by cyber gangsters, another arm of Vladimir Putin’s pursuit of asymmetric warfare over the past two decades, is revealed in the news that garda experts are trawling through 60,000 messages from the Conti gang, the group responsible for the disabling ransomware attacks on Ireland in May 2021.

The records were released after the criminals initially sided with the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrating increasing tensions within the hacking communities as digital conflict is ramped up as part of the war.