Will the Kremlin use Information Warfare to suppress growing dissent?

Last Updated on Friday, 12 March 2010 07:20 Written by Jeffreycarr Friday, 12 March 2010 07:10

Figure 1: Tide of protests engulf more Russian cities

Of all the countries in the world which are developing cyber capabilities, the Russian Federation leads the pack in its use of Information Warfare (the Kremlin’s terminology for cyber operations). It’s happened during the Tulip revolution in Kyrgyzstan (tomorrow, March 13, 2010 is the 5 year anniversary) and versions of it are regularly employed to control opposition political parties inside the RF (e.g., Anna Bukovskaya).

Now, as another election approaches on March 14th, more and more Russian citizens are voicing their protests against corruption and an increasingly unbearable economic split beteen the haves and the have-nots. The following is an excerpt from a feature story by Clair Biggs that’s getting broad coverage across Eurasia:

“In places as varied as Samara, Irkutsk, and Archangelsk, disgruntled residents have been joining forces to protest low pay, mounting unemployment, police abuse, and what increasing numbers of Russians see as a corrupt government on both the local and federal level.

The largest demonstration, held last month in the Baltic city of Kaliningrad, drew as many as 10,000 people.

The demonstration will be repeated on a nationwide scale when Kaliningrad becomes one of at least 15 cities to stage coordinated protests on March 20.

And the protest is not limited to banners and slogans shouted on cold city squares; some prominent Russians, too, are voicing their resentment at the regime built by Vladimir Putin over the past decade.

“The rich are becoming even richer, the poor even poorer. Corruption is total, everyone is stealing,” veteran rock star Yury Shevchuk told his fans at a March 7 concert in Moscow. “The system has built a brutal, cruel, and inhumane government in our country. People are suffering, not only in prisons and camps, but in orphanages and hospitals as well.”

The recent protests are a notable shift from the public passivity of the early and mid-2000s, when the country was enjoying an unprecedented wave of stability and economic prosperity. Political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin says much of the roiling discontent now is due to the economic crisis, which has hit Russia particularly hard after almost a decade of oil-fueled growth.

“Unemployment is on the rise, prices are soaring, livings standards are worsening,” he says. “Television tells us tales that we are rising from our knees, but this no longer reassures people.”

Nervous Kremlin?

Curiously, authorities are allowing the opposition rallies and police so far have largely refrained from arresting or beating protesters.

Oreshkin says Russia’s political leaders understand that using force to stem such a wave of discontent could turn against them.

“Authorities are rational enough not to follow the Chinese path,” he says. “They would happily break the arms of protesters, but when these protesters number 1,500 or even 10,000, it’s better to find a compromise with them. This signals an evolution of society’s political culture, a very slow evolution that is taking place with the change in generation.”

As patient as the Kremlin may be in addressing this growing wave of dissent, I’m anticipating an increase in the use of Russian social media by Medvedev and Putin-friendly bloggers and politically-connected youth organizations. Since this will be expensive, expect to see a bump in cyber crime to fund it.

The US Army and the BEST definition of Cyberspace to date

Last Updated on Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:20 Written by Jeffreycarr Thursday, 11 March 2010 10:20

The US Army’s new Cyberspace Operations Concept Capability Plan 2016-2028 is an outstanding piece of work; not just because it underscores much of what I’ve been saying since 2008, but because it builds a detailed framework of cyberspace as an operating environment which will prove invaluable to every agency in the Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense as well as Congress, the White House and the American public. The following is a brief excerpt which accompanies the above graphic. Do yourself a favor and read at least the Executive Summary. You’ll quickly see why I’m so pleased with it.

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“Cyberspace can be viewed as three layers (physical, logical, and social) made up of five components (geographic, physical network, logical network, cyber persona, and persona) (see figure 2-1).

Yell “Chinese dissidents’ gmail hacked” and people say “huh?” Yell “Cloud” and you lose millions.

Last Updated on Tuesday, 9 March 2010 10:44 Written by Jeffreycarr Tuesday, 9 March 2010 10:44

While there’s far too much information about the December attacks on Google and 30+ other companies that remain unknown, consider what the following companies who were victims of these attacks have in common:

• Google
• Yahoo
• Adobe
• Intel
• Rackspace
• Juniper Networks

They either provide Cloud services (Google, Yahoo, Adobe) or support them in some way, i.e.:

• Juniper Networks (the Cloud-ready Data Center)
• Rackspace (The Rackspace Cloud)
• Intel (Trusted Execution Technology for secure Cloud computing)

If my speculation is correct, then I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Amazon and Microsoft were also hit since both are major Cloud service providers (EC2 and Azure).

Think of this as the cyber equivalent of a reconnaissance mission where the task was to survey and exfiltrate information on the major Cloud service providers as well as the companies that provide hardware and software to support  and/or secure Cloud operations. That would imply that the actual attack is yet to come, and it won’t be about Chinese dissidents having their gmail accounts hacked.

Arbor Networks recently released its Fifth Annual Infrastructure Security report: and one of its highlights for 2010 is:

Attacks Shift to the Cloud: Nearly 35% of respondents believe that more sophisticated service and application attacks represent the largest operational threat over the next 12 months.

It should be noted that Google has denied that its attack had anything to do with the Cloud in, tellingly, it’s Enterprise blog. This post was written by David Girouard, president of Google’s Enterprise group:

“This was not an assault on cloud computing. It was an attack on the technology infrastructure of major corporations in sectors as diverse as finance, technology, media, and chemical. The route the attackers used was malicious software used to infect personal computers.”

I don’t mean to mock Google’s not-so-subtle attempt to protect it’s income stream but doesn’t this response remind you of that scene from Jaws when the mayor tried to explain to the police chief how he should be more careful with his words?

Mayor Vaughn: Martin, it’s all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, “Huh? What?” You yell shark, we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.