Russian Cyber Warfare The History Of Russia S State Sponsored Attacks Across The World

*Includes pictures *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Russia has been depicted by the media as a cyberspace boogeyman, a nation of hackers that can and will exploit any and all vulnerabilities of private organizations, government entities, and social media platforms. Over the last 10 years, as hackers all over the world have been mobilized to carry out state agendas, this "nation of hackers" reputation has evolved into something much more serious. The vague notion of "Russian hackers" used to primarily worry CTOs of banks and credit card companies, while merely amusing or fascinating curious people, but today, Russian cyberwarfare keeps military officers, policymakers, and ordinary citizens around the world up at night. From alleged interference in foreign elections to coordinated power outages in Ukraine, numerous large-scale cyber attacks are thought to have been carried out by Russian state agencies and their proxies recently. Certain Western leaders have gone so far as to claim that Russian cyber warfare eclipses even terrorism in threatening global security- in the words of British Army General Sir Nick Carter, Russia "represents the most complex and capable state-based threat to our country since the end of the Cold War." The roots of cyber warfare, cyber espionage, and information warfare in Russia from signals intelligence and industrial espionage date back to the time of the USSR, while modern day information warfare and cyber warfare relate to Russian military operations. This book also looks at World War II's aftermath, signals intelligence and espionage during the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and how the resulting chaos cultivated Russia's homegrown hacker talent. Through it all, this book looks at how Russia has interacted with other countries in the cyber domain, especially its former Soviet neighbors and the United States. Whether Russia does indeed eclipse other Western adversaries as the top global security threat, it is undeniably the home to an immensely talented community of hackers, many of whom have expressed willingness to employ their skills to support Russian foreign policy objectives, typically for monetary compensation. And regardless of whether these hackers are directly sponsored by the Russian state, foreign governments, or the intermediaries operating on behalf of the them, the history of Russia's cyber warfare is a fascinating one. Russian Cyber Warfare: The History of Russia's State-Sponsored Attacks across the World details the Russian intelligence groups' efforts to wage cyber warfare online. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Russia's cyber activities like never before.

Cyber attacks are a real threat to our country. This report presents the opposed views of USA and Russia on cyber security and gives insight into the activities of the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. The Grizzly Steppe Report provides details regarding the tools and hacking techniques used by the Russian hackers in order to interfere the 2016 U.S. elections. This activity by RIS is just part of an ongoing campaign of cyber-enabled operations directed at the U.S. government and its citizens. These cyber operations have included spearphishing campaigns targeting government organizations, critical infrastructure entities, think tanks, universities, political organizations, and corporations leading to the theft of information. In foreign countries, RIS actors conducted damaging and/or disruptive cyber-attacks, including attacks on critical infrastructure networks. In some cases, RIS actors masqueraded as third parties, hiding behind false online personas designed to cause the victim to misattribute the source of the attack. This report provides technical indicators related to many of these operations, recommended mitigations, suggested actions to take in response to the indicators provided, and information on how to report such incidents to the U.S. Government. The edition also provides crucial information on the legality of hostile cyber activity at state level. While the United States and its allies are in general agreement on the legal status of conflict in cyberspace, China, Russia, and a number of like-minded nations have an entirely different concept of the applicability of international law to cyberspace.

Russian Information Warfare: Assault on Democracies in the Cyber Wild West examines how Moscow tries to trample the very principles on which democracies are founded and what we can do to stop it. In particular, the book analyzes how the Russian government uses cyber operations, disinformation, protests, assassinations, coup d'états, and perhaps even explosions to destroy democracies from within, and what the United States and other NATO countries can do to defend themselves from Russia's onslaught. The Kremlin has been using cyber operations as a tool of foreign policy against the political infrastructure of NATO member states for over a decade. Alongside these cyber operations, the Russian government has launched a diverse and devious set of activities which at first glance may appear chaotic. Russian military scholars and doctrine elegantly categorizes these activities as components of a single strategic playbook —information warfare. This concept breaks down the binary boundaries of war and peace and views war as a continuous sliding scale of conflict, vacillating between the two extremes of peace and war but never quite reaching either. The Russian government has applied information warfare activities across NATO members to achieve various objectives. What are these objectives? What are the factors that most likely influence Russia's decision to launch certain types of cyber operations against political infrastructure and how are they integrated with the Kremlin's other information warfare activities? To what extent are these cyber operations and information warfare campaigns effective in achieving Moscow's purported goals? Dr. Bilyana Lilly addresses these questions and uses her findings to recommend improvements in the design of U.S. policy to counter Russian adversarial behavior in cyberspace by understanding under what conditions, against what election components, and for what purposes within broader information warfare campaigns Russia uses specific types of cyber operations against political infrastructure.

"Russia's brazen use of cyber operations to interfere in elections, conduct information warfare, and as part of its ongoing conflicts with neighboring states has made international headlines. However they have also maintained a thin veneer of deniability and have avoided clear red lines that would be widely accepted as acts of war. While cyber operations possess the means to achieve mischievous, subversive, and potentially destructive effects, how is an injured state supposed to respond? Scott Jasper seeks to bring clarity to this problem by undertaking an in-depth look at the legal and technical aspects of actual Russian cyber operations. He puts Russia's use of cyber in the context of their military and information warfare doctrines and looks at examples from the 2016 US presidential election, the 2017 NotPetya mock ransomware attack, the 2017 French presidential election, and many more. Jasper proposes deterrence, defense, resilience, and cost-imposition responses and offsetting strategies for the United States and other states who have been on the receiving end of these attacks. This book will make a major contribution to helping scholars, students, and the national security community understand Russian cyber competition and how to respond"--

Russia has deployed cyber operations while maintaining a veneer of deniability and avoiding direct acts of war. In Russian Cyber Operations, Scott Jasper dives into the legal and technical maneuvers of Russian cyber strategies, proposing nations develop solutions for resilience to withstand attacks.

An essential, eye-opening book about cyberterrorism, cyber war, and the next great threat to our national security. “Cyber War may be the most important book about national security policy in the last several years.” –Slate Former presidential advisor and counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke sounds a timely and chilling warning about America’s vulnerability in a terrifying new international conflict. Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers. It explains clearly and convincingly what cyber war is, and how vulnerable we are as a nation and as individuals to the vast and looming web of cyber criminals. Every concerned American should read this startling and explosive book that offers an insider’s view of White House ‘Situation Room’ operations and carries the reader to the frontlines of our cyber defense. Cyber War exposes a virulent threat to our nation’s security.

"With the nuance of a reporter and the pace of a thriller writer, Andy Greenberg gives us a glimpse of the cyberwars of the future while at the same time placing his story in the long arc of Russian and Ukrainian history." —Anne Applebaum, bestselling author of Twilight of Democracy The true story of the most devastating act of cyberwarfare in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it: "[A] chilling account of a Kremlin-led cyberattack, a new front in global conflict" (Financial Times). In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billion dollars in damage—the largest, most destructive cyberattack the world had ever seen. The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in history: a group known as Sandworm. Working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike. A chilling, globe-spanning detective story, Sandworm considers the danger this force poses to our national security and stability. As the Kremlin's role in foreign government manipulation comes into greater focus, Sandworm exposes the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield. It reveals how the lines between digital and physical conflict, between wartime and peacetime, have begun to blur—with world-shaking implications.

The Russian Federation is a key state actor in cyberspace; cyber events associated with Russian state and non-state actors have threatened Russia's neighbors, shaped international cyber norms, as well as influenced strategists' understanding of cyber power. This thesis seeks to understand Russian cyber capability through the lens of Robert Jervis's offense-defense theory in order to answer the thesis's central question: Do Russian cyber capabilities reflect an investment in offensive or defensive cyber weapons, and do Russia's cyber technology, doctrine, and policy differentiate its posture as offensive or defensive? To evaluate Russian cyber capability, this thesis considers two factors--technology and geography--concluding that, although the Russian government is modifying its cyber terrain to improve defensiveness, Russia's brandished cyber weapons suggest that it pursues offensive capability. To evaluate Russia's posture differentiation, the thesis examines Russians' understanding of cyber power, Russian information warfare and hybrid warfare doctrines, and the country's international engagements, concluding that, although Russia has historically presented its posture as defensive, it is increasingly difficult to make that distinction. Finally, the thesis evaluates this state-level analysis in the broader context of the international system; Russia's historical aggression and current behavior in cyberspace likely reflects Stephen van Evera's explanatory hypothesis for the causes of war--defensive expansion.