Cyberwarfare by Russia

It has been claimed that Internet operations by Russian secret police services include a variety of "active measures" to influence the world events, including denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation over the internet, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, and persecution of cyber-dissidents. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov , some of these activities are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB but has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department, but others are directed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. This point is, however, disputable (see below).

Disinformation

US author Pete Earley described his interviews with former senior Russian intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov who defected in the United States in 2000. According to him,

Sergei would send an officer to a branch of New York Public Library where he could get access to the Internet without anyone knowing his identity. The officer would post the propaganda on various websites and send it in emails to US publications and broadcasters. Some propaganda would be disguised as educational or scientific reports. ... The studies had been generated at the Center) by Russian experts. The reports would be 99% accurate but would always contain a kernel of disinformation that favored Russian foreign policy. ... "Our goal was to cause dissension and unrest inside the US and anti-American feelings abroad"

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Tretyakov did not specify the targeted web sites, but made clear they selected the sites which are most convenient for distributing the specific disinformation. During his work in New York in the end of 1990s, one of the most frequent disinformation subjects was War in Chechnya.

According to Soldatov, one of the Russian teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq.

Cyberattacks

Some believe that Russian secret police services organized a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their Cyber-warfare against other countries, most notably 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia and Azerbaijan [1]. One of young Russian hackers said that he was paid by the Russian state security services to lead the hacker attacks on NATO computers. He was majoring computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid by the FSB According to Soldatov, a hacker attack on his web site Agentura was apparently directed by the secret services in the middle of Moscow theater hostage crisis.

Russian state security teams

Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov made the following points when asked by Yevgenia Albats about "internet brigades":

• Russian state security teams actively disrupt work of certain political blogs;
• One of the teams, who called themselves GRU officers, was actively involved in a disinformation campaign prior to US invasion of Iraq;
• The teams are also involved in hacker attacks, and they have probably attacked his own web site during the Moscow theater hostage crisis;
• Some of the "internet brigades" are coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is currently a part of the FSB and has been formerly a part of 16th KGB department;
• There are also such teams from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Persecution of cyber-dissidents by the FSB

When Russian president Vladimir Putin called on his nation's women to have more children, journalist Vladimir Rakhmankov published a satiric article on the Internet calling Putin "the nation's phallic symbol". Rakhmankov was found guilty and fined by the court. Journalist Boris Stomakhin and director of Russian-Chechen Friendship Society Stanislav Dmitrievsky were convicted in 2006 for publishing articles on the internet.

Disruption of political blogs

Main article: web brigades

The appearance of Russian state security teams in RuNet was described in 2003 by journalist Anna Polyanskaya (a former assistant to assassinated Russian politician Galina Starovoitova), historian Andrey Krivov and political activist Ivan Lomako. They claimed the appearance of organized and fairly professional "brigades", composed of ideologically and methodologically identical personalities, who were working in practically every popular liberal and pro-democracy Internet forums and Internet newspapers of RuNet..

Russian agents in Polish web sites

According to claims of unnamed "Polish experts on Russian affairs", reported by the Polish newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny in 2005, at least a dozen active Russian agents work in Poland, also investigating the Polish Internet. The source also claims that the agents scrutinize Polish websites (like those supporting Belarusian opposition), and also perform such actions, as—for instance—contributing to Internet forums on large portals (like Gazeta.pl, Onet.pl, WP.pl). Labeled as Polish Internet users, they incite anti-Semitic or anti-Ukrainian discussions or disavow articles published on the web, according to the source.

"LiveJournal fighters"

A member of National Bolshevik Party Roman Sadykhov reported about "LiveJournal fighters", directed and paid from the Kremlin and instructions given to them by Vladislav Surkov, a close aide of Vladimir Putin Surkov allegedly called Livejournal "a very important sector of work" and said that people's brains must be "nationalized" . He instructed "LiveJournal fighters" that

"We are losing in the Internet in that respect. It is always easier to break down things than to do something positive. What you are doing are jokes and minor infractions. Not only methods, but also goals must be radical. We must blow this romantics out of them [our opponents]. It is important not only to protect the authorities - this is understood, but we need to attract young people who can work creatively in the Internet. This is an important communication place of young people. Make them interested in conversations with you."

Comments by Russian government officials

Alexander Yusupovskiy, head of the analytical department of the Federation Council of Russia (Russian Parliament) published in 2003 an article "Conspiracy theory" in Russian Journal with criticism of theory of web brigades.

His points included:

• Authors exclude from their interpretation of events all other hypotheses, such as internet activity of a group of some "skinheads", nazbols or simply unliberal students; or hackers able to get IP addresses of their opponents.
• According to Yusupovskiy, authors treat "independence of public opinion" in spirit of irreconcilable antagonism with "positive image of Russia".
• Although Yusupovskiy himself has a list of claims against Russian security services and their presense in virtual world (as "according to statements of media every security service is busy in the Internet tracking terrorism, extremism, narcotic traffic, human trafficking and child pornography"), his claims are of different nature than those of Polyanskaya.
• Yusupovskiy himself didn't take Web brigades theory seriously, "naively" considering that officeers of GRU or FSB have more topical problems than "comparing virtual penises" with liberals and emigrants. His own experience at forums also did not give him a reason proving the theory.

Agents in wikipedia

A number of publications suggested that intelligence agents may have infiltrated Wikipedia to remove undesirable information and insert disinformation . According to publication in Russian computer weekly Computerra, anonymous editors have always "corrected" and continue "correcting" articles of Russian Wikipedia in the interests of special services, although "this is nothing special since everyone knows about the special place of the secret services in the structure of Russian state"

In popular culture

The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work. He wrote:

"It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".

See also

• Information warfare
• Harassment by computer
• Jingjing and Chacha
• Computer crime
• Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China
• Astroturfing
• Web brigades
• 50_Cent_Party