"Imagine a future “first strike” cyberattack in which a nation burrowed its way deeply into the industrial and commercial networks of another state and deployed ransomware across its entire private sector." -GRU persona in early '16 after their Ukraine blackout succeeded. 1/x
h/t to @emptywheel who points out that line was actually lifted from a Forbes article. 2/x
forbes.com/sites/kalevlee…
forbes.com/sites/kalevlee…
The article oddly foreshadowed a new approach by GRU. By the end of 2016, they were reattacking Ukraine's grid with more advanced malware, but they were also kicking off their first fake ransomware operations against other sectors. These operations were scalable and deniable. 3/x 
Ultimately, those ransomware operations lead to the NotPetya attack, which was scaled, deniable, and economically significant. 4/x
Here's the full, heavily-plagiarized article from the Alice Donovan persona, posted to Veterans Today before the GRU adopted the ransomware play: web.archive.org/web/2017052804… 5/x
