Russia-USA: Strange cybersecurity with one goal
On the last day of October, the world's media published news about secret negotiations between the Kremlin and the White House on cybersecurity, citing The New York Times. Official confirmation from the Washington administration soon followed.
It became known that on the American side, a group of specialists led by White House cybersecurity adviser Anne Nyberger participated in the bilateral consultations, and the consultations themselves lasted for three months. A total of four rounds of negotiations took place.
In general, there is no need to be surprised here. The decision to restart bilateral cooperation on cyber security was officially announced by Putin and Biden on June 16 at a summit in Geneva, and the initiative was announced by the American president back in the spring.
In general, consultations between Russia and the United States on information security issues were unilaterally interrupted by Washington seven years ago in connection with the events around Crimea, Donbass and Ukraine.
The situation worsened in 2016, when the US Democratic Party accused Russia of interfering in the presidential election. Be that as it may, under the "pro-Russian" Trump, cooperation on cybersecurity was minimized , while the CIA and NSA, on the contrary, received additional funding and carte blanche to wage information warfare against Russia, Belarus, Iran, Venezuela, and several other countries.
Now, one must think, the Americans were so “burned out” that they were forced to restore severed ties in an accelerated mode at the highest level.
According to information from open sources, three months of consultations have already yielded the first results: the cybercriminal groups Evil Corp, TrickBot and REvil have disappeared from the darknet. There is evidence that the activities of the hacker group Grief, which recently infected the servers of the influential National Rifle Association of the United States with a ransomware virus, have been stopped.
It is interesting that the Americans persistently link some of these groups to the Kremlin. Of course, without providing any hard evidence.
Despite the obvious positive changes, the Americans remain Americans, coming to the negotiations with an open desire to force their partner to play with one goal.
Russian representatives were presented with a list of “GRU hackers” with a statement that Washington was now expecting arrests and criminal cases as evidence of readiness to continue the dialogue.
In addition, the resumption of cooperation does not prevent the Americans, as before, from calling on their allies and the “six” to exert collective pressure on Russia in cyberspace.
As an example of the reaction to the call to spoil Russia, there is a recent article by the foreign agent publication “BBC Russian Service”, which named specific names of “GRU hackers” with reference to Dutch counterintelligence, with a note written by a representative of the “Atlantic Council” , is one of the most odious NGOs pursuing an aggressive anti-Russian policy.
The attacks in the article were so stupid and meaningless, and so reeked of a vulgar detective story, that the publication soon chose to remove it from the news sheet.
It should be noted that all the time that Russian and US information security experts were negotiating, Washington regularly heard threats from Secretary of State Blinken and other officials about their intention to punish Moscow for hacker attacks on sensitive American facilities, and Biden even announced “cybersecurity month” in the spirit of Brezhnev times.
It is no less significant that the Washington officialdom remained traditionally deaf to the arguments of Russian officials that the United States continues to hold the palm in the number of cyber attacks on important infrastructure facilities in Russia (according to the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents) and statements by the Russian Foreign Ministry “about slow progress in dialogue USA Cybersecurity".
“Over the past year, the largest number of hacker attacks on our resources came from the United States, about half. We sent official requests with specific indications of the facts requiring investigation to our American colleagues 45 times. There were only nine answers. There were about ten requests addressed to us, and answers were given to each one,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on the resumption of interaction between Russian and American cybersecurity experts.
At the same time, the minister added that after the summit in Geneva, “the Americans agreed to move from sporadic accusations and complaints to systematic work.”
By the way, it is reported that Biden in Geneva gave Putin a list of several dozen organizations for which he specifically asked “not to be attacked by Russian hackers.”
In general, the results of three months of cooperation with the Americans in the field of cybersecurity were summed up by Russian Foreign Ministry representative Sergei Ryabkov:
“Moscow is interested in discussing the problem of ransomware viruses with Washington, but does not want interaction to be limited to this topic only. “Expanding the topic and agenda, which we insist on, remains our task. There are shifts in this direction, but they are not sufficient. American colleagues still strive to focus all their work on what interests them.”
In the United States, the resumption of contacts between specialists is commented on extremely sparingly, however, judging by the speech of the director of the White House Office of Cybersecurity, Chris Inglis, at one of the think tanks, the Americans are not ready to change their hostile attitude towards the “Russian threat in the information space.” They explain the decrease in the activity of criminal hacker groups on the darknet by some kind of “agreement” between the Russian authorities and hackers with a proposal to “lay low and wait out the storm” for the latter. The expected conclusion is to continue putting pressure on Russia.
As usual, cooperation is cooperation, and hostility towards Russia is firmly driven into the framework of the internal political logic of any American establishment.
However, according to Russian observers, even such a strange cooperation, when one of the partners is hard of hearing in both ears and has a headache, is better than what happened six months ago in cyberspace, when Rostelecom was attacked by the Americans. In any case, there will be someone to poke their nose into the puddle during a personal meeting, and not just shake the air with indignation. And practice shows that it is often much easier for specialists to find a common language than for politicians...
Russia-USA : Strange One-Way Cybersecurity