Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has said that Russia has been using the conflict in Gaza as a “cover story” for the recent wave of cyberattacks on British firms
The recent wave of cyberattacks crippling British businesses is largely the work of Russia, using the Gaza conflict as a smokescreen to divert attention, according to the head of one of the world’s leading cybersecurity firms.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, told City AM that most of the high-profile hacks forcing a series of blue-chip companies to partially shut down operations can be traced back to Moscow and its network of criminal gangs.
“I think most of the high-profile attacks, if you trace them back, you’re going to find Russian fingerprints,” he said. “Not on all – some are 15-year-old hacker kids which, it turns out, the UK is good at producing. But… I think the largest sower of chaos behind them is Russia because that’s what they are, sowers of chaos.”
In recent months, Heathrow, Marks and Spencer, and Jaguar Land Rover have all had to grapple with major attacks on their computer networks, causing flight cancellations, halting car production, emptying shelves, and impacting the economy.
More than two months after an attack brought its production lines to a standstill, JLR has yet to fully restore its manufacturing capacity. Meanwhile, M&S was unable to accept click and collect orders for around 15 weeks while it recovered from its own devastating incursion, as reported by City AM.
Russia used Gaza as ‘cover’ for cyberattacks.
Prince, whose company safeguards more than a fifth of the internet, had anticipated a surge in cyber warfare akin to “World War 3” following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but was taken aback when cyberattacks actually plummeted dramatically.
The tech boss revealed that the spike in attacks across the UK was actually sparked by the Hamas-Israel conflict.
“It turned out a lot of the cybercriminal gangs were made up of Russians and Ukrainians, and they tore themselves apart” during the initial years of the eastern European conflict, he explained.
“What caused the attacks in Europe to take off, was the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza. Because that provided a proxy where the Russians had – at least – a cover story that it wasn’t them [behind cyber attacks], it was the Iranians.”
Prince made these comments during an interview where he also announced Cloudflare’s intention to recruit 400 UK interns next year as part of their global drive to employ over 1,000 junior staff members.
“The job market for young people is really, really hard, and I think that’s stupid,” he stated.
“Because what we find is, when you go through massive transitions [like artificial intelligence ], 50-year-old CEOs don’t have any earthly idea how transformative AI is going to be for things like writing code or doing sales, whereas our interns bring this incredible new DNA to the place.”
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