Highly recommend The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda (available from university libraries and under the black flag) if you want to understand how this activity works. The chapters on Russia...
Highly recommend The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda (available from university libraries and under the black flag) if you want to understand how this activity works. The chapters on Russia ("Defending against Russian
Propaganda" and "Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda
Performance 2000–2018:
Stagecraft as Statecraft") are worth reading by themselves, if you don't want to digest the whole thing. The only disadvantage to this text is that it needs an update for the pandemic period.
Western democracies face a wicked problem - Russia's current interests neatly align with those of homegrown plutocrats, illiberal religious fundamentalists, white supremacists, and carbon barons. There's no means of maintaining a cohesive information defense because the call is coming from inside the building. The U.S. right wing has been systematically dismantling and attacking the few uncorrupted civil society institutions available.
I'm so anxious about this that I think I need to go touch grass for a while...
One of my buddies just separated from the Air Force, mostly doing cyber operations. In one of our conversations, he mentioned how there’s basically an undeclared cyber war going on between the...
One of my buddies just separated from the Air Force, mostly doing cyber operations. In one of our conversations, he mentioned how there’s basically an undeclared cyber war going on between the U.S. and Russia, with whole battles that are classified. Imagine an entire front in World War II being completely undisclosed. The cyber warfare being so under the radar hinders public awareness on the Russian threat and Russia’s actions. We could do what we did in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, and start releasing intel to show what they are doing.
We can also escalate (“You want a secret war, you’re gonna get one”). Think hybrid-attacks a là Stuxnet, special operations attacks on infrastructure (focusing on oil and gas refineries), and assassination campaigns against the Siloviks, designed to destabilize and sow paranoia within the Russian security apparatus.
Large-scale data breaches, long periods of services being offline would be the obvious damage. There may also be damage that isn’t so obvious; e.g., an American chemical plant that is offline for...
Large-scale data breaches, long periods of services being offline would be the obvious damage. There may also be damage that isn’t so obvious; e.g., an American chemical plant that is offline for a few months due to a hybrid attack that hasn’t been disclosed to the public.
I think that you could make the argument that the rash of cyberattacks on American industry in the last couple of years could be seen as the visible damage of a cyber war. They're currently...
I think that you could make the argument that the rash of cyberattacks on American industry in the last couple of years could be seen as the visible damage of a cyber war. They're currently attributed to "hacker groups" rather than "Russia", but is that actually the case all the time? It's hard to say.
Yeah, and in a way, I'm not sure it matters? The Internet is unsafe. Defenses are probably about the same regardless of which country it seems to be coming from.
Yeah, and in a way, I'm not sure it matters? The Internet is unsafe. Defenses are probably about the same regardless of which country it seems to be coming from.
Presumably there are different scales of threat and competency of adversary? A hacker who just wants a payout from a midsize architectural firm is very different from a nation who cares more about...
Presumably there are different scales of threat and competency of adversary? A hacker who just wants a payout from a midsize architectural firm is very different from a nation who cares more about lingering disruption of a national healthcare organization.
Yes, there are some differences, but the lines seem rather blurry. Ransomware attacks seem to happen against any organization with money that's a soft target. Hospitals and medical networks have...
Yes, there are some differences, but the lines seem rather blurry. Ransomware attacks seem to happen against any organization with money that's a soft target. Hospitals and medical networks have been victims. Sometimes such attacks come from North Korea, so it's both a state-funded attack and done for the money.
And I suspect that some Russian hackers are interested in money as well as disruption?
Highly recommend The SAGE Handbook of Propaganda (available from university libraries and under the black flag) if you want to understand how this activity works. The chapters on Russia ("Defending against Russian
Propaganda" and "Evaluating Putin’s Propaganda
Performance 2000–2018:
Stagecraft as Statecraft") are worth reading by themselves, if you don't want to digest the whole thing. The only disadvantage to this text is that it needs an update for the pandemic period.
Western democracies face a wicked problem - Russia's current interests neatly align with those of homegrown plutocrats, illiberal religious fundamentalists, white supremacists, and carbon barons. There's no means of maintaining a cohesive information defense because the call is coming from inside the building. The U.S. right wing has been systematically dismantling and attacking the few uncorrupted civil society institutions available.
I'm so anxious about this that I think I need to go touch grass for a while...
One of my buddies just separated from the Air Force, mostly doing cyber operations. In one of our conversations, he mentioned how there’s basically an undeclared cyber war going on between the U.S. and Russia, with whole battles that are classified. Imagine an entire front in World War II being completely undisclosed. The cyber warfare being so under the radar hinders public awareness on the Russian threat and Russia’s actions. We could do what we did in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine, and start releasing intel to show what they are doing.
We can also escalate (“You want a secret war, you’re gonna get one”). Think hybrid-attacks a là Stuxnet, special operations attacks on infrastructure (focusing on oil and gas refineries), and assassination campaigns against the Siloviks, designed to destabilize and sow paranoia within the Russian security apparatus.
With an actual war you will see the damage, at least. I wonder what damage there is? Maybe it looks like something else?
Large-scale data breaches, long periods of services being offline would be the obvious damage. There may also be damage that isn’t so obvious; e.g., an American chemical plant that is offline for a few months due to a hybrid attack that hasn’t been disclosed to the public.
I think that you could make the argument that the rash of cyberattacks on American industry in the last couple of years could be seen as the visible damage of a cyber war. They're currently attributed to "hacker groups" rather than "Russia", but is that actually the case all the time? It's hard to say.
Yeah, and in a way, I'm not sure it matters? The Internet is unsafe. Defenses are probably about the same regardless of which country it seems to be coming from.
Presumably there are different scales of threat and competency of adversary? A hacker who just wants a payout from a midsize architectural firm is very different from a nation who cares more about lingering disruption of a national healthcare organization.
Yes, there are some differences, but the lines seem rather blurry. Ransomware attacks seem to happen against any organization with money that's a soft target. Hospitals and medical networks have been victims. Sometimes such attacks come from North Korea, so it's both a state-funded attack and done for the money.
And I suspect that some Russian hackers are interested in money as well as disruption?
Absolutely. It's hard to tell, and that's a benefit for the aggressor.
Quite long but very interesting article. Still reading tho.