RUSSIA: THE CYBER GLOBAL PROTAGONIST

Abstract

Russia has discovered by trial and error one of the most economical ways to assert foreign policy goals, conduct espionage, inflict economic loss, and conduct destabilization through disinformation on its rival powers. Although western and European cyber efforts in this regard are more covert and protected by legislation such as Official Secrets Act’s, it’s apparent that Russia has – more than any other nation – publicly engaged in cyber operations in direct support of military operations. For the Russians, cyber is a Hammer (& Sickle) and everything standing in Russia’s way is a “Nail”. The transformation of traditional Russian organized crime into sophisticated cyber-criminal gangs and their subsequent rapid accumulation of wealth deeply illustrated the potential of political and later in the evolution military cyber operations. In a very real way this set the stage for the Russians to invest, explore and trial cyber at a political and then military level over the past two decades. Due to a “cosy” relationship between Russian politicians, Oligarchs, and some - but not all - cyber-criminal groups there was a large talent pool of offensive cyber skills to leverage in Russia. Russian military and political cyber operations are both overt and covert and are very intertwined. They include some of the most sophisticated espionage campaigns ever discovered to globally destructive cyber-attacks. More recently, the information security research community has observed precision and persistent capabilities unleashed on unsuspecting organizations. This paper charts a course of Russian cyber capability development and explores the application of those cyber capabilities in both a strategic policy level to application on a tactical battlefield.