Cyber Warfare.

[TsarSamuil]

CIS interior ministers agree to fight cyber crimes.

16:54 14/10/2011
YEREVAN, October 14 (RIA Novosti)

The Commonwealth of Independent States interior ministers have agreed on a draft strategy for fighting cyber crime, Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev said on Friday.

“These sorts of crimes tend to be international, which is why we should work together to fight them,” Nurgaliyev said after a meeting of the Council of CIS Interior Ministers in Yerevan, Armenia.

The draft was prepared by Belarus and approved by the other council members. It will now be sent for approval to the CIS leaders.

Alexei Moshkov, the head of the special technical project office at the Russian Interior Ministry, said that the main goal was to make this document more practical. “We think it should contain some practical measures for keeping the national information space from being used for destructive political and social means,” Moshkov said.

“This sort of document will help address the problem and bring together all interested parties. The high level at which it is being discussed will provide a strong impetus for the development of a global model for fighting cyber crime”, Moshkov added.

[TsarSamuil]

Bulgaria to establish National Cyber Security Authority.

SOFIA, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Bulgaria would establish National Cyber Security Authority (NCSA) to enhance cyber security, officials said Wednesday.

The NCSA would set up the necessary regulatory framework and coordinate the country's efforts in improving cyber security, said Colonel Ivan Ivanov, secretary general of an interagency working group preparing for the establishment of the NCSA, on the sidelines of the first Southeast Europe regional conference on cyber security and cyber crime.

The role of the National Computer Security Incidents Response Team, set up in 2008, would be strengthened next year, Parvan Russinov, deputy minister of Transport, Information Technology and Communications, told Xinhua.

More experts would work around the clock in the team and rapid reaction teams would be set up to address cyber security problems in state organs.

[TsarSamuil]

Lukashenko calls for internet vigilance.

16:59 26/10/2011
MINSK, October 26 (RIA Novosti)

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko called on Wednesday on Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member states to coordinate their activities in fighting cyber attacks.

“Attempts are being made in cyberspace to destabilize the situation in various countries,” Lukashenko said at a meeting of CSTO member states.

He cited the recent uprisings in the Arab world, and said an attempt had also been made to destabilize the situation in Belarus vie social networks.

“We have got to know how to fight against this evil,” Lukashenko said.

He also said that while Belarus did not intend to close down the internet, restriction could be imposed.

The CSTO includes Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kirgizia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

[TsarSamuil]

FSB Accuses West over Cyber Security.

18:17 27/03/2012
TASHKENT, March 27 (RIA Novosti)

Western special services are trying to compromise Russia’s cyber security, Army Gen. Sergei Smirnov, first deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said on Tuesday.

“We need to secure our society against the activity of Western special services who would like to inflict damage upon our cyber security,” he said while summing up a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s regional antiterrorism structure.

“We know that Western special services establish special units, as part of their departments, aimed at studying this problem and at creating a relevant base in countries where they want to conduct that activity,” Smirnov said.

“We know that the problem of the Arab Spring, the problem of revolutions that occurred on the African coast, they all faced it,” he said.

“These are new technologies, used by Western special services to create and maintain constant tension in societies,” Smirnov said. “The goal is serious - up to deposition of the political regime that has existed in these countries.”

The Arab Spring swept the Arab world after a street vendor in Tunisia killed himself in December 2010 after the authorities banned him from selling vegetables without permission.

A wave of demonstrations and protests followed in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, resulting in the ouster of the countries’ leaders. Protests also aggravated the situation in other regional countries, including Syria.

Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on March 21 that the Russian government is considering setting up a dedicated cyber-security command, responsible for protecting the armed forces' information systems.

Rogozin said Russia would follow the steps of the United States and NATO aimed at staving off the growing threat of cyber attacks on vital military communications networks.

Soon after Rogozin’s statement, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said his ministry has already started working out an armed forces cyber security concept.

Smirnov said special services’ countermeasures to cyber security threats would not have any “impact on society from the standpoint of democratic norms.”

“Society must defend itself. If the enemy uses ‘dirty’ technology, we need to clear the space from such activity in some way,” he said.

[TsarSamuil]

Anti-WikiLeaks hackers claim responsibility for DDoS attack on RT website.

RT.com
17 August, 2012, 13:16



The RT.com website went down for hours worldwide on Friday after a massive DDoS attack, with the hacker group calling itself AntiLeaks claiming responsibility.

“Yes. We are behind the DDoS attack on #RT_com,” AntiLeaks wrote on Twitter.


The hackers that attacked RT.com put a #FreePussyRiot hashtag in the end of their tweet, expressing their support for the three alleged members of punk band Pussy Riot who are currently on trial in Moscow.

The DDoS attack disrupted RT’s extensive reporting on the final day of Pussy Riot trial. RT has been following the band’s case on a daily basis since their infamous 'punk prayer' at Russia’s Christ the Savior Cathedral in February.

The three women will hear the verdict later today. Their controversial case dubbed, by some in the Western media as 'theatre of the absurd,' has sharply divided Russian society and sparked criticism both in Russia and abroad, with many public figures expressing support for the group.

AntiLeaks registered a Twitter account on August 4, when they claimed responsibility for taking down the WikiLeaks site.

“Tango down wikileaks.org #Wikileaks #Cowards” AntiLeaks boasted on Twitter two weeks ago.

The group called Julian Assange “a new breed of terrorist” and said they launched their attack in response to his attempt to seek asylum in Ecuador.

The attack coincided with WikiLeaks’ release of a new portion of emails supposedly acquired by the hacktivist group Anonymous from the server of consulting firm Stratfor. The latest leaks concern the alleged existence of a clandestine US-based surveillance system called TrapWire, which collects images from surveillance cameras across the US and uses them to track individuals and preemptively identify possible threats to national security.

In reaction to the DDoS attack on RT.com, WikiLeaks tweeted that “Anti-WikiLeaks group is claiming to be behind the DDoS takedown of Russia's international broadcast network, RT, which has been supportive.”

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Top Comments

Who the fuck would be anti wikileaks execpt for the government and people that watch fox news? And we all know that those viewers are too retarded to pull that shit off.
dude12nothin 17 hours ago 26

[TsarSamuil]

Slovenia to beef up cyber security.

English.news.cn 2013-08-10 23:24:29

LJUBLJANA, Aug. 10 (Xinhua) -- Slovenia is working out a cyber security strategy to upgrade its capability against cyber-attacks, the Slovenian Press Agency reported on Saturday.

A national cyber security authority will be set up within the framework of the Interior Ministry later this year, will be in charge of the project, the report said.

Currently, Slovenia has got a Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), the Defense Ministry and police department involved in operations against any possible cyber-attacks.

However, these institutions are not well coordinated, according to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport.

At least 1,250 cyber-attacks reportedly occurred in Slovenia in the year 2012.

[TsarSamuil]

Russian Army Indicates ‘Cyber-Force’ Plan Underway.

MOSCOW, August 20 (RIA Novosti) – A senior Russian military official indicated Tuesday that Russia is in the process of setting up a special force for cyber warfare, tentatively confirming earlier reports citing defense sector officials.

“If such work is being done, it means it’s probably needed. Everything will be done by deadlines defined by [Defense] Minister [Sergei Shoigu], and you’ll know about it when it’s done,” Shoigu’s deputy Oleg Ostapenko said.

Plans to create a military cyber-force were first announced last fall by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. A military source told RIA Novosti in July on condition of anonymity that these new troops will come into being by 2014.

Shoigu has also previously spoken about the Russian military’s “hunt” for computer programmers. The head of the recently-created Foundation for Advanced Military Research – a state-run R&D agency similar to America’s DARPA, which specializes in cutting-edge military research – said Monday that “cyber warfare” was one of his agency’s main priorities and called the Internet a potential “theater of war.”

[TsarSamuil]

Russia to Create Cyberwarfare Units by 2017.

MOSCOW, January 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russia plans to create special cyber-defense units to protect the country against online warfare in the coming years, a senior military commander said Thursday.

The units are being formed “to defend the Russian armed forces’ critical infrastructure from computer attacks,” Major-General Yuri Kuznetsov said at a meeting of military officials.

Formation of the units will be conducted in stages and will be completed by 2017, Kuznetsov added without disclosing further details.

In August, a Defense Ministry spokesperson confirmed there were plans to train cyberwarfare units, but dodged a question on the timeframe of their activation.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said in July the army must heavily recruit new programmers to meet the rising need for military software.

Computer experts have suggested in the past that the government has cooperated with hacker groups operating in the country.

Alexei Moshkov, the head of the country’s cybercrimes Bureau of Special Technical Measures, said Thursday that his agency thwarted hacker attacks last year aimed at defrauding Russian citizens of a total of around $28 million.

Every second, 12 people around the world become victims of hacking, and the vast majority of attacks target financial assets, Moshkov said.

Online attacks also frequently target news outlets.

On Thursday, major Russian newspaper Vedomosti’s website was knocked out for several hours by a denial of service attack.

[TsarSamuil]

Windows 10 service agreement stirs espionage fears in Russian Communists.

RT.com
11 Aug, 2015 12:45

A senior Communist functionary claims that the end-user service agreement attached to the new Windows 10 OS violates the Russian law requiring the personal data of Russian citizens to be collected and processed only by specially-licensed companies.

Vadim Solovyov, the chief lawyer of the Communist Party in the State Duma addressed Prosecutor General Yury Chaika with an official request to launch a probe into Microsoft’s latest operating system, Izvestia daily reported Tuesday.

In his letter, the politician claims that the end-user service agreement distributed with Windows 10 reads that the operating system (OS) will collect and store users’ web history, access points, passwords and other personal data, including physical location, emails and other messages and information about phone calls. Microsoft also reserves the right to share this data with special services, use it in research, publish or use it in any other way it sees fit.

READ MORE: ‘No matter what platform you use, it’s all under surveillance’

However, current Russian law demands that such gathering and processing of personal information is only permissible by companies included in the National Register of Personal Data Operators, Solovyov noted. As Microsoft is not included on this register, the distribution of Windows 10 on Russian territory becomes illegal, he wrote.

In addition, the MP shared his fears that the use of the new OS in Russian state structures could end in leaks of classified information to foreign special services.

“Practically, we are talking about espionage here,” the letter reads.

To stop the suspected breach of law, Solovyov asked Chaika to launch a probe into Microsoft and to block on the Russian territory all websites that allow the downloading of Windows 10. He also suggested issuing a warning to all bodies of executive and legislative power asking staff not to use Windows 10 on their devices.

The Microsoft press service commented on the initiative saying that any transfer of personal information is possible only with the user’s consent.

Apart from the regulations concerning the collecting and processing on personal data Russia has a pending law obliging all internet companies to store the personal information of Russian citizens inside the country. This act is expected to come into force from September 2016 in order to give foreign and domestic internet companies enough time to create data-storage facilities in Russia.

READ MORE: New Russian law bans citizens’ personal data being held on foreign servers

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Senior Russian lawmaker seeks ban on Windows 10 in state agencies.

RT.com
21 Aug, 2015 14:22

The State Duma’s vice speaker has asked the Russian government to ban the use of the Windows 10 OS among Russian civil servants over fears the American software may give access to classified information and Russian officials’ personal data.

In his letter to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, MP Nikolai Levichev of the center-left Fair Russia party said the service agreement signed by any Windows 10 users allows Microsoft to access all passwords, password prompts and other information used for data protection. The US corporation also receives other types of data, from users’ contacts, their emails and even location.

Microsoft warns that the received information will be stored and processed in the United States or any other country for an indefinite period of time and transferred to US state agencies.

Levichev has therefore asked Medvedev to consider a complete ban on the Windows 10 operating system in Russia’s bodies of state power, state-owned corporations, and state-sponsored scientific and research institutions. The MP has also sent a letter to the head of the Russian internet watchdog Roskomnadzor, Aleksander Zharov, asking whether Microsoft’s user service agreement contravenes Russian laws.

Senator Aleksander Volkov supported Levichev’s initiative in an interview with the Regnum news agency, adding that Russia needed its own protected software to replace Microsoft products.

Levichev’s letter echoes one sent to Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika by Communist Party MP Vadim Solovyov in August. Solovyov wrote that Russian laws stipulated the gathering and processing of personal information should only be conducted by companies included in the National Register of Personal Data Operators. Microsoft is not on that! The communist MP also feared use of the new OS in Russian state structures could end in leaks of classified information to foreign intelligence services. The Prosecutor General’s Office is yet to reply to the MP’s concerns.

Microsoft’s press service replied saying transfer of personal information is only possible with the user’s consent, and that it gave users access to a comprehensive suite of privacy settings.

In mid-2014, the Russian parliament passed a law obliging all internet companies to store the personal information of Russian citizens inside the country. In order to give foreign and domestic internet companies enough time to create data-storage facilities in Russia, the act won’t come into force until September 2016 at the earliest.

[TsarSamuil]

Russian E-Warriors Render Aircraft Carriers Useless.

Sputnik
RUSSIA 15:16 24.08.2015

Russia has developed a “noiseless” system of neutralizing aircraft carrier battle groups without missiles or torpedoes.

The notion of “unsinkable” aircraft carriers may soon become history for the simple reason that the planes they carry will be rendered totally useless.

Aircraft carriers have long been considered the world’s most powerful and deadliest weapons systems only a nuclear warhead can destroy, again if it is lucky enough to cut through the flattop’s powerful missile defenses.

No more. You no longer need to go around the carrier’s air defenses or launch missile and torpedo attacks. All you need to do is cut the onboard planes’ communications with the mother ship and jam their “friend or foe” electronic identification system.

Russian knowhow in this tricky field of electronic warfare is really second to none and the upcoming MAKS-2015 airspace expo will showcase the country’s latest systems of electronic jamming.

The history of Russian electronic warfare technology goes back to the 1997 MAKS show when a small R&D firm rolled out an electronic jammer which effectively disabled signals sent down by the GPS.

The Americans were so impressed that they purchased several such units. Testing them back home they were unpleasantly surprised to see their high-precision cruise missiles being sent off course by the Russian jammers.

Needless to say that Russian electronic warfare technology has come a long way ever since and can do much better than the simple prototypes which raised so many eyebrows about twenty years ago…

At the start of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq not a single cruise missile was able to hit its target.

Five days and dozens of lost cruise missiles later the Americans accused Russia of redirecting the Tomahawks towards the desert away from their designated targets.

Only after the Americans had located the positions of the Russian jammers and destroyed them in a series of carpet bombing raids, did the Tomahawks manage to regain their smart capabilities…

Electronic jamming may prove equally deadly when used against carrier ships by turning off the incoming planes’ electronic identification systems.

This done, the ship’s computer “labels” such planes as UFOs and activates the accompanying frigates’ air defense systems to shoot them down.

The commanders will take some time to sort things out and before that happens most of the incoming places will have been knocked out effectively depriving the carrier battle group of its intended purpose…

[TsarSamuil]

Great Firewall: Russian Military to Receive Hack-Proof Supercomputers.

TECH 12:40 17.02.2016

Advanced hack-proof laptop computers will soon be available to the tactical units of the Russian armed forces to secure vital information from eavesdroppers, the Russian media reported, citing the press service of the United Instrument Corporation.

The portable computer, based on the Astra Linux operating system, ensures maximum protection against cyberattacks and leaks, including during text, voice and videoconference transmissions, Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper wrote citing a press-release posted on the UIC’s website.

The laptop features a GPS-Glonass receiver, VGA and HDMI interfaces, a Wi-Fi module and four USB 3.0 ports.

It runs on a sixth-generation 3.5 GHz microchip. The battery ensures up to eight hours of continuous operation at temperatures ranging from minus 50 to plus 50 Centigrade.

Mass production of the new military notebook is slated for the second quarter of 2016.

In another first, newly-developed smart watches have recently been tested by a paratroop unit in Siberia.

Dubbed as “Strelets-Chasovoi” (Sentinel Shooter), the device transmits information about emergency situations via secured digital channels up to 50 kilometers away.

[TsarSamuil]

MP urges intl probe into US cyberattacks on other nations.

RT.com
20 Feb, 2016 11:12

Russian MP Robert Shlegel believes the OSCE and UN must investigate a recent US congressman’s confession to participating in the CIA’s electronic operations against Russia, as such attacks violate the 2015 UN resolution on cyber security.

The lawmaker was commenting on the words of former CIA operator-turned-Republican Congressman Will Hurd, who said in a press interview that he had participated in “some offensive cyber operations,” adding “let’s just say I’ll probably never be invited to Moscow anytime soon” when reporters asked him to elaborate about the targets of these operations.

“It looks like the violation of the 2015 Russia-initiated resolution titled ‘Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security’,” Shlegel told fellow MPs during a State Duma session.

“If the United States violated this resolution - and apparently this is what has happened - it must be discussed in the international organizations. The international community must develop effective mechanisms to prevent such actions and never leave them unanswered,” he added.

“Such a confession from a highly-placed US politician is outrageous, especially if we remember how many times the United States and their allies – Estonia, Georgia, Japan and others – have accused Russia of cyberattacks,” Shlegel said. “These constant accusations are nothing but an attempt of the United States to hide their own aggressive actions and now we have proof of that.”

Washington officials have repeatedly accused Russian authorities of backing or ordering hacker attacks on US sites and Moscow has repeatedly denied such allegations as unfounded and not backed with any proof. After another such row that took place in April 2015 Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that “blaming everything on Russia has already turned into some sort of sport.”

The official added that official websites of the Russian president and his administration faced hundreds and even thousands of cyberattacks every day and that there were attempts to crash Putin’s annual Q&A session with the public.

“The attempts to crash the Q&A – you know it’s a rather complex telecommunications event – are performed mostly from abroad,” Peskov told reporters.

[TsarSamuil]

Foreign Policy Diary - Global Cyber Standoff.

South Front
May 31, 2016

[TsarSamuil]

Medvedev orders state agencies to switch to Russian-made software in 3 years.

RT.com
27 Jul, 2016 09:54

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has approved a plan under which local software companies receive strong preferences in tenders announced by federal ministries and other bodies of state power.

“I have approved the plan of transition to the Russian-made software for federal bodies of executive power as well as state-owned non-budget funds. The plan takes three years, including the current year,” the PM said at the session of the government commission for information technology.

Over this period of time, the government must prepare all necessary legal acts and requirements for the various software needed for operations of state bodies, including the standards for cloud technology.

The federal law and government order banning the use of all foreign-produced software in state and municipal agencies came into force in Russia on January 1 this year. According to these documents, state bodies and organizations that purchase software necessary for their work will have to choose from programs included in a special register of Russian software.

The register includes software copyrighted by the Russian government, state agencies, municipal bodies and Russia-registered non-profit groups or commercial companies - of which at least 50 percent is owned by Russians.

The software must be available all over the country and the share of license fees paid to foreign legal entities must not exceed 30 percent of overall proceeds. Currently there are about 1,000 software products in the register, but industry experts earlier told reporters that this number could rise to several thousand before the end of the year.

Exceptions are allowed in cases when the register lacks any programs with the necessary technical or operating features, but agencies intending to purchase foreign-made software would have to back their bid with a review from a group of independent experts.

The law setting preferences for Russian software producers is a part of a larger import-replacing plan that was presented to Medvedev by the Communications Ministry in early 2015. Apart from the foreign-made software ban, the document provides for government support to Russian software firms and measures to promote the development of the nation’s own operating systems.

Russian politicians and officials have repeatedly warned against the use foreign-made software in state bodies and government-owned companies due to the threats of surveillance and data leaks.

In October 2015, a group of leftist and nationalist MPs promised to draft a bill that would ban any use of products by Google, Yahoo and WhatsApp for government workers, under threat of fines or even dismissal. In 2014, members of the center-left party Fair Russia proposed officially recommending that all parliamentarians to stop using iPhones and iPads – also over fears of eavesdropping by foreign special services.

In mid-2013, MPs from the parliamentary majority United Russia party asked the Defense Ministry, Federal Security Service and the Communications Ministry immediately to limit civil servants’ access to the US internet services and social networks such as Gmail and Facebook. They also suggested that violators of the ban should be tried for high treason, which in Russia carries punishment of up to 20 years behind bars. This proposal has not inspired any legislative movements so far.

[TsarSamuil]

Communications Ministry mulls total control over Russian sector of the web - reports.

RT.com
19 Aug, 2016 10:52

The Communications Ministry has prepared a bill that formally defines critical digital infrastructure and allows only Russian companies to own the hardware and databases that control the .ru and .рф domains of the internet, mass media report.

Russian business newspaper Vedomosti reported on Friday that the Communications Ministry was proposing to change the Russian Law on Communications, with a separate article detailing the measures aimed at regulating the internet in the .ru domain and in the Cyrillic .рф domain.

Such measures would include defining critical internet structures consisting of the national domain zone as well as the infrastructure required for its operation, and the state system that would back up the information about internet exchange points, IP addresses and autonomous networks.

The law would also order that internet exchange points in the Russian sector of the web could only be owned by Russian companies. However, the current edition of the bill allows for foreign ownership of up to 20 percent of these points in future – a system similar to the one used in the current Russian Law on Mass Media. The rules are even stricter for national domain registers – the owners of such companies can be only Russian entities founded by the Communications Ministry and financed from a special “Universal Service Reserve” fund which, in turn, will be formed with a 1.2 percent income excise levied on all telecom corporations operating in the country.

Reports that the coordination of the Russian national domain in the internet could be put under the control of state structures had earlier been circulated by business daily Kommersant, but Vedomosti has now provided more details on the bill.

In March this year Russian Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov said in an interview with RT that the US government and certain US-registered corporations had a disproportionately strong influence on the internet, and the minister allowed for measures to establish Russia’s independence in this sphere.

He pointed out that in 2014 the US authorities promised to hand over control of one of the most critical parts of internet infrastructure – the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) – from the US Department of Communications to a multi-stakeholder collective, but this move was later postponed. “With this prolonged monopolization, many countries in the world are working on technical solutions that would protect national segments of the internet from a possible external destructive action. They are creating backup infrastructures, which respond to a disruption – intentional or accidental – and prevent national segments from being blocked,” Nikiforov said.

The minister also added that the Russian government and private companies were heavily investing in the internet, and that the desire to protect these investments was only natural.

In 2014 the Russian president’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, commented on media reports claiming that the authorities allegedly had plans to “disconnect Russia from the global internet.” Peskov dismissed the reports as false, but noted that Russian special services and IT corporations were working to improve cyber security due to the unpredictable behavior of the West.

“We all know who the chief administrator of the global internet is. And due to its volatility, we have to think about how to ensure our national security,” the official stated. It’s not about disconnecting Russia from the worldwide web, but about “protecting it from possible external influence.”