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.

Update on the “accidental shooting” of Magomed Yevloyev

Last Updated on Thursday, 4 March 2010 11:16 Written by Jeffreycarr Thursday, 4 March 2010 11:14

I couldn’t believe this story when I first read about it on August 31, 2008. In fact, I blogged about it at the time because it reminded me of the accidental shooting scene in Pulp Fiction. Here’s how RIA Novosti reported it back then:

MOSCOW, August 31 (RIA Novosti) – The owner of a banned website in the Russian North Caucasus republic of Ingushetia died of gunshot wounds sustained while riding in a police car on Sunday.

Magomed Yevloev died in hospital in the republic’s largest city of Nazran.

A source in the republic’s Interior Ministry told RIA Novosti that Yevloev’s death had come about after he was detained by police at Magas Airport. Police officers then put him in a police car to take him to Nazran to give testimony regarding “a criminal case.”

“Preliminary reports say that as the vehicle that Yevloev and the police officers were in was moving, one of the police officers’ guns accidentally went off, and a bullet hit Yevloev in the head,” the source said.

“He was shot straight in the temple,” said Magomed Khazbiyev, Yevloev’s official representative, adding that doctors had done all they could to save his life.

The police officer who shot him was sentenced to 2 years in a penal colony after being convicted of “negligent homicide owing to the improper discharge by a person of his professional duties“, however that has now been reduced to two years of house arrest because the crime was changed to negligent homicide. A high court judge dropped the “improper discharge” part.

I thought that the killing of  Yevloyev was so noteworthy that I used it to open Chapter 1 of my book:

Whenever someone asks if anyone ever died in a cyber war, Magomed Yevloev springs to mind.

On August 31, 2008, in the North Caucasus Republic of Ingushetia, Yevloev was arrested by Nazran police, ostensibly for questioning regarding his anti-Kremlin website Ingusheta.ru. As he was being transported to police headquarters, one of the officers in the car “accidentally” discharged his weapon, … into the head of Magomed Yevloev.

The U.S. Department of State called for an investigation. Vladimir Putin reportedly said that there would be an investigation. To date, nothing has been done. Ingushetia.ru (now Ingushetia.org) and the Chechen website kavkazcenter.com are some of the earliest examples of politically motivated Russian cyber attacks dating as far back as 2002. In other words, in addition to Russian military operations in Chechnya, there were cyber attacks launched against opposition websites as well.

The Russia Georgia War of August 2008 is the latest example, occurring just a few weeks before Magomed Yevloev’s killing. If anyone would qualify as a casualty of cyber warfare, it might just be this man.

Now I see that the man who took over Ingushetia.ru after Magomed Yevloev’s death was also killed last October, albeit under mysterious circumstances.

Imagine if Russia or China announced a formal policy of using non-state actors in cyber deterrence

Last Updated on Wednesday, 3 March 2010 10:56 Written by Jeffreycarr Wednesday, 3 March 2010 10:56

As I pointed out earlier, Initiative #10 states that the U.S. will be “building an approach to cyber defense strategy that deters interference and attack in cyberspace by improving warning capabilities, articulating roles for private sector and international partners, and developing appropriate responses by both state and non-state actors.“

About a month ago, the Russian Federation released their military doctrine for 2020. As far as cyber operations go (the RF calls it Information Warfare), it was almost a non-event, which is partly why I haven’t blogged about it (yet). Still, for the purpose of comparison between what the Kremlin released and what the White House released, I think its a constructive exercise. So according to the RF’s Military Doctrine and Principles of state policy on nuclear deterrence to 2020, the following sections relate to Information Warfare:

12. (d) Acknowledgment of the intensification of the role of information warfare in contemporary military conflict.

13. (d) The prior implementation of measures of information warfare in order to achieve political objectives without the utilization of military force and, subsequently, in the interest of shaping a favorable response from the world community to the utilization of military force.

41. The tasks of equipping the Armed Forces and other troops with armaments and military and specialized equipment are: (c) to develop forces and resources for information warfare

And that’s pretty much it. But what if 41 (c) said “to develop state and non-state actors as forces in the use of information warfare”. Can you imagine the uproar that would occur; that Russia has “outed” its own use of non-state actors? Well, that’s essentially what this document has done for the U.S. government.

Now if this document were released in a vacuum, it could be argued that it’s just a statement that could have been written a little clearer; that my concerns are excessive and over-blown. Fair enough, but it wasn’t released in a vacuum. Many other nations in the world community see the U.S. in a more negative way already because 20 of the world’s top 50 worst ISPs for serving malware operate in the United States. This creates the illusion that the US is responsible when in fact foreign actors use US servers to mask attribution and, as a side benefit to them, feed anti-US sentiment. This strategy seems to be working according to the McAfee report “In the Crossfire” (.pdf), which surveyed “600 IT and security executives from critical infrastructure enterprises across seven sectors in 14 countries”. According to the report, the U.S. is seen as the “most worrisome potential aggressor”.

Ironically, China will surely use this document against us as they continue to accuse the U.S. of launching cyber attacks against .cn websites. China, PRC officials will say, is busy shutting down bad ISPs and enforcing its own anti-hacking laws (which they are doing, by the way), while the U.S. does nothing about its own infected computers and badware.

While I have no doubt that the intentions of those who wrote this Initiative were good, announcing it in the public version is a potential disaster for us.