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Opinion
July 7, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
standing with Russia’s own hacker demi-monde: do what you want outside the country, but don’t mess at home. For a long time, this virtual cease- fire held. Besides, the real money was to be made in the West, and this was also where hackers felt the real tests of their skills were to be found.
For a variety of reasons, though, it has now bro- ken down. There is more profit to be made at home. The security agencies not only demand favours from the hackers but even recruit them
– sometimes as an alternative to prison – then the two-way relationships criminalise the very state agencies meant to control cyberspace. A new generation of hackers has little time for the Kremlin and its “patriotic hacker” script-kiddies (in other words, those who simply use off-the- shelf malware), and also sees more of an exciting challenge at home.
For these reasons, Russia’s government and busi- ness cyber defences are rather less robust than they might be, having relied so long on a degree of immunity. It was noteworthy that Russia suffered disproportionately from the recent WannaCry ransomware attack linked to North Korea. Pirated Windows systems and programmes – which are the most vulnerable because they cannot be up- dated properly – are in widespread use. Even the police reportedly relies on them. The central bank has also warned that the national Mir payment card, established as part of the country’s financial security strategy, may well be vulnerable to cyber attacks.
Meanwhile, there has been an upsurge in Chi- nese hacking of Russian companies for intellec-
tual property theft (aerospace firms seem to be a particular target) and even domestic cracking of banking systems. It is worth noting that China, the US and even Turkey outstrip Russia as sources
of cyber attacks, so an anarchic world in which black hat hackers (those who engage in illegal or malicious hacking) attack any system vulnerabil- ity they find would be an uncomfortable place for Russia.
This should also make those gung-ho Russian strategists who seem to relish the idea of fight- ing an undeclared virtual cyberwar with the West think twice. The capacity to persuade some tech- nologically-challenged Democrat staffers to click on a link they ought not, or to exploit a weakness identified by the National Security Agency, does not represent evidence of some extraordinary cyber capacities.
Here’s the irony; while Russia may have all the evil hackers in the movies, in reality it is likely the US and other Western countries that have more formidable cyber weapons at their disposal. For some time, Russia has been lobbying for a UN- brokered global cybersecurity accord, but in a cynical way, seeking to retain its own freedom of operation and simply denying its clear role in such operations. It may well come to regret playing a role in the normalisation of hacking as politics and business by other means.
Mark Galeotti is a senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the director of Mayak Intelligence. He blogs at In Moscow’s Shadows and tweets as @MarkGaleotti.