Tag: Cybersecurity

Russia’s New Information Security Doctrine: Guarding a Besieged Cyber Fortress

Victory, Plate 2
Courtesy of Thomas Hawk/Flickr. CC BY-NC 2.0

This article was originally published by the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA) on 20 December 2016.

Russia´s new Information Security Doctrine follows the line adopted in previous strategic documents whereby Russia is perceived as a besieged fortress. The doctrine identifies a number of external threats to Russia’s information space and calls for intensified monitoring of the Russian segment of the internet, Runet.

On 5 December 2016, President Vladimir Putin signed a new Information Security Doctrine of the Russian Federation, replacing the Information Security Doctrine published in 2000. The Doctrine is one of the strategic planning documents and, as such, it expresses the official view about the management of national security in the information sphere. Rhetorically, the text resembles the National Security Strategy, adopted in December 2015, which signalled a heightened sense of threat towards Russia, and underlined the importance of maintaining strategic stability. Consequently, the spirit of the new Doctrine is sharper, almost bellicose in tone, and the threats are described in more concrete terms.

The information sphere is defined in a broader sense than in the previous doctrine. The key term in this regard is “informatization”, which refers to social, economic and technical processes for adopting and expanding information technology in society and the country as a whole, and for securing access to information resources. This change indicates recognition of the role of the information sphere in technological development but, most importantly, regards it as a tool to change the fabric of society. The Doctrine describes how this tool is used in the interests of Russia’s national security, and calls for an increased role for internet and information security management and the domestic production of information technology.

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Categories
Terrorism

Deep Web. The “Dark” Side of IS

Black hole
Courtesy Rookuzz…/Flickr

This article was originally published by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) on 7 November 2016.

Synopsis

The so-called Islamic State (IS) is the most innovative terrorist group the world has seen. In the backdrop of its loss on the ground, IS is expanding its cyber capabilities to conduct more cyber-attacks and hacking. This and its migration into the ‘darknet’ will make IS more dangerous than before.

Commentary

TERRORIST AND non-state actors have used different modes and mediums to spread their message and communicate with their comrades. The dawn of the Internet has also provided such groups with unparalleled opportunities to establish communications and operational links that were not possible before. Starting from websites, terrorist groups moved to more interactive mediums like chatrooms and forums. It was social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter that truly revolutionised how militants, terrorists and non-state actors communicated with each other, recruited sympathisers and supporters and disseminated their propaganda.

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Whodunnit? Russia and Coercion through Cyberspace

Blue Circuit
Courtesy of Yusuke Umezawa / Flickr

This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 19 October 2016.

Late in May 2014, a group calling itself CyberBerkut leaked a map of the Ukrainian Dnipropetrovsk Oblast administration’s IT resources, information on the Central Election Commission of Ukraine’s servers, and the correspondence of its staff. In the following days, which included the country’s presidential election, CyberBerkut claimed they had again compromised the election commission’s servers, leaked more confidential information, conducted a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack the commission’s website (which instructed potential voters how and where to vote), and blocked the phones of election organizers. The group also released documents implying that the recently appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Igor Kolomoisky, was complicit in pro-European Ukrainian plans to promote the “correct” candidate for president of Ukraine.

Despite the best effort of the Russian group behind CyberBerkut, the center-right, pro-European Petro Poroshenko won the Ukrainian presidency. But CyberBerkut wasn’t finished. Almost exactly five months later, the group used similar tactics in the days preceding the Ukrainian parliamentary elections. The results were largely the same: Pro-European candidates won the majority of seats. An uninitiated observer might be keen to discard these events as failed electioneering. After all, Moscow did not succeed in getting its men elected. But to label the operation a failure is to assume that the primary goal was to get pro-Russia officials elected. Over the course of the past four months, we have seen similar operations unfold in the United States, and — as was the case in Ukraine — there are reasons to believe that swaying the election is not the primary objective. Just as in the case of the CyberBerkut incidents, among the key observers of these operations in the United States have been cyber-security firms like FireEye. The manager of their information operations analysis team recently shared some of their findings with me, which informs the analysis below.

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Chinese and Russian Cyber Espionage: The Kaiser Would Be Jealous

Espionage Image: Alan/Flickr

This article was originally published by War on the Rocks on 11 September, 2015.

After the OPM hack, there were suggestions that the Chinese might be building digital dossiers on every U.S. government official, or even on all Americans. More recent reports have the Russian and Chinese intelligence services exploiting personally identifiable information about Americans from security clearance databases, airline records, medical records and many other sources on a massive scale. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the head of the National Counterintelligence Executive has confirmed that foreign powers are doing these things. Other, anonymous sources told the Times that “at least one clandestine network of American engineers and scientists who provide technical assistance to U.S. undercover operatives … overseas has been compromised as a result.” It has even been suggested that the Russian and Chinese services are throwing data from the Ashley Madison breach into the mix.

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Why Don’t Defense Contractors Do Cyber?

Cyber security – why are America’s big contractors departing the field? Image: Ivan David Gomez Arce/Flickr

This article was originally published by the Atlantic Council on 1 August, 2015.

Going on eight years now, Raytheon has been mounting a strategic campaign in cyber security. This past April, the company spent $1.7 billion on Austin-based Websense, the 13th cyber business it has purchased since October 2007 (Defense Mergers & Acquisitions Daily, 20 April 2015). In Forbes, defense industry booster Loren Thompson called the transaction “bold”—the value roughly matched that of the 12 preceding deals. That pattern suggests that Raytheon has been learning along the way how to build a successful business. More recent evidence was Raytheon’s selection this month as a finalist in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge, in which some of the top teams in the US have been working to create self-healing code. As Byron Callan of Capital Alpha Partners wrote, that alone “suggests it’s doing something right,” whatever misgivings investors and their analysts may have had about Raytheon’s long-running strategy.

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