In less than 24 hours we had the Netherlands, the UK, the US, the EU and Canada all levying accusations and in cases charging people of Russian hacking and cyber-warfare.
From doping agencies, to the chemical warfare investigators the targets were varied, and the aim was that of creating disruption. If one has to extrapolate this and extend it to the various allegations of hacking through bots from Russia in the way they’re deployed to disseminate fake news on digital platforms, one can see there’s a new pattern, a new scenario and a new reality.
Russia (or Russians) have strengthened their position in a ‘transparent’ environment hard to be seen by radars, but can be felt across the board.
Is the new Cyber War, the new Cold War?
Sky News reports the following “So, when the Foreign Office releases a list of “reckless and indiscriminate” Russian cyber attacks, the images come swiftly to mind: Stalin, Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall. But before we declare a new Cold War, we would be wise to pause. Thinking in analogue terms may be precisely what gets us into trouble. The British foreign secretary is clearly alert to this danger. In his statement on Wednesday, he notes that several of the cyber attacks damaged Russian institutions as well as foreign ones. He blames the GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, not the Russian people. This is not in any sense a declaration of war.
It is, however, a clear warning, one that deserves to be taken extremely seriously. The Foreign Office statement contains little news; Russian military intelligence was already linked to most of the attacks it lists. But it confirms what has been suspected for some time. Not only are Russian agents spreading fake news and propaganda through social networks, but its teams of hackers are worming their way into key Western institutions, leaving destruction and demoralisation in their wake. “
The Guardian reports “It must go down as one of the most embarrassing months ever for Russia’s military intelligence. In the 30 days since Theresa May revealed the cover identities of the Salisbury poison suspects, the secretive GRU (now GU) has been publicly exposed by rival intelligence agencies and online sleuths, with an assist from Russia’s own president. Despite attempts to stonewall public inquiry, the GRU’s dissection has been clinical. The agency has always had a reputation for daring, bolstered by its affiliation with special forces commando units and agents who have seen live combat. But in dispatching agents to the Netherlands who could, just using Google, be easily exposed as graduates of an elite GRU academy, the agency appears reckless and absurdly sloppy.
Russia has claimed that the investigations are fake and that researchers are in league with western intelligence. But most of the evidence to uncover the spies was already out there, and conveniently timestamped on social media.
The saga began after May’s announcement last month, when Vladimir Putin ordered the two Salisbury suspects to appear on television. There, the two men fumbled through an awkward story about visiting Salisbury twice to see the cathedral, while an editor for state television cast aspersions that they were gay.
It didn’t help. One of the two men was outed as a likely GRU colonel anyway, after online investigators dug up photographs from his military service and leaked passport records.
Along the way, the researchers from Bellingcat and the Insider also recognised that the men were issued sequentially numbered passports by a special division, making it easier for anyone with access to a leaked database to identify them.
And then came Thursday’s bombshell: four men outed by Dutch investigators for attempting to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (as well as Malaysia’s investigation into a downed jetliner).
The alleged spies were caught carrying enough telephones to fill an electronics store. Moreover, like all meticulous Russians on a business trip, they held on to their taxi receipts from GRU headquarters.
Russia will publicly deny the latest reports and revelations about the alleged GRU agents. It has no other alternative. But the exposure of several consecutive European operations should raise questions about whether Russian military intelligence is being intentionally provocative or has simply gone off the rails.”
