I made a huge mistake the moment our airplane skidded to a hard stop at Kyiv’s Boryspil International Airport. I toggled off of airplane mode and for a moment allowed my phone to connect with Vodafone, the local data carrier in Ukraine. No big deal. My international roaming plan would prevent massive data charges, and my virtual private network (VPN), I assumed, would protect me from snoops sniffing mobile traffic. I needed to connect with colleagues attending the Global Cybersecurity Summit (GCS), a 2-day event designed to unite industry leaders and address urgent security challenges facing governments, private companies, and NGOs. The irony was that I’d landed right in the middle of a hacker trap.
OP-ED
Dan Patterson: Ukraine is a test bed for global cyberattacks that will target major infrastructure
A girl runs past a closed branch of Oschadbank on June 27, 2017 in Kyiv.
