WEAPONS OF MASS DISRUPTION
OLEH DEREVIANKO was on the road to his parents’ village in Ukraine on a bright June day in 2017 when he got a call from the CEO of a telecommunications company. Computer systems were failing at Oschadbank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine, and the CEO suspected a cyberattack. Could Derevianko’s digital security firm investigate? Derevianko told his response team to look into it and kept driving. Then his phone buzzed again. And again. Something big was happening.
Across Ukraine that day, cash registers suddenly shut down. People trying to withdraw money saw demands for ransom appear on ATM screens. Lawmakers in the country’s parliament could not access their laptops. Turnstiles in Kiev’s subway stopped working, and departure boards at the airport went down. Technicians at Chernobyl, the
