War Games in Cyberspace: NATO's Cyber Defense Exercises Coincide with "Anonymous" Cyber Attacks against Ukraine
NATO Cyber Defense Center in Tallinn, Estonia features a fusion of modern technology with outdated cold war ideology
Barely Acknowledged by the mainstream media, NATO launched in late November its Largest-ever cyber defense exercises "Cyber Coalition 2,013" to test the Alliance Ability to Defend its networks from attacks.
The
exercises involved some 500 experts - more than 100 participants from
the NATO Cyber Defense Center for Excellence and over 300 cyber
defense experts from 32 states-members and partners of the Alliance, who
worked remotely.
Coalition cyber 2 013 Continued the line of NATO exercises Steadfast Jazz 2013 , which were held in Poland and the Baltic states in the beginning of November.
Coincidence?
Besides
repulsion of aggression against Estonia from an imaginary state Botnia,
the exercises also featured testing NATO cyber defense mechanisms. By an amazing coincidence, in the very beginning of the exercises a number of Ukrainian, Russian, Polish and Baltic state sites underwent an attack . Even the site of NATO Cyber Defense Center in Tallinn was down for some hours.
OBSCURE GUESSWORK.
It's
not still clear who was behind the attack, though there were some
reports of a notorious hacker group Anonymous Ukraine, who cracked some
NATO servers in 2011, claiming responsibility for it.
The day before the attack Anonymous Ukraine published a video to announce the beginning of the "Independence" operation against both Russian and European integration options for Ukraine. Up to here everything seems quite clear. However,
it's strange That after the Estonian Authorities lost control of the
Ministry of Defense site for almost 24 hours (!), They Decided not to
Conduct an investigation of the incident under the pretext of major expenses Necessary.
Quiet a strange statement to come from a country which hosts NATO Cyber
Defense Center, which was created to defend Estonia against cyber
attacks.
In Ukraine, things were different. The
hacked sites of Ukrainian government bodies (the Prosecutor General,
SBU medical service, etc.) Featured a banner of NATO Cyber Defense
Center in Tallinn warning that the sites didn't correspond to NATO
security standards. Despite the hype in the social networks, there was no official reaction to the incident. Obviously, Kiev decided to swallow that to avoid "unnecessary consequences".
It's clear that Yanoukovich didn't have enough guts to accuse NATO of cyber terrorism or conduct an independent investigation. By
the way, while some Polish, Latvian and Estonian sites were also
attacked, only Anonymous Ukraine managed to give an appropriate
reaction.
Brussels, naturally, denied any involvement in the incidents. In
the midst of the exercises NATO Cyber Defense Center in Tallinn
officially announced that someone just used its name to discredit the
work of the alliance. However, the perpetrator was never named ( Https://www.ccdcoe.org/453.html ).
What
is not possible for the official bodies becomes real with the help of
the expert community, namely, the International Center for defense
studies in Tallinn (again) under the direction of a notorious
informational provocations specialist, a retired US diplomat and
political scientist Matthew Bryza . Piret Pernik, an expert of the Center, made a thorough chronological research o f the Steadfast Jazz 2 013 incidents only to come to a staggering conclusion: the trace goes to Russia.
On the one hand, it's quite clear that from the Estonian point of view Russia is the only possible perpetrator. On the other hand, there should be at least some evidences. Pernik is sure that she has it.
In
her opinion, the basic evidence is that Russian journalists reporting
on this unfortunate incident dared to came with a hypothesis of what
happened. Since
Pernik is sure that Russia media are controlled by the FSB, their
hypothesis is, evidently, a product of the Russian special services,
which were certainly involved in the hack. A wonderful example of impeccable logic.
In
fact, Russian media only proposed the evident - the attack was
deliberately or non-deliberately executed by NATO in the course of the
Steadfast Jazz 2013 exercises which tested the Alliance cyber defense
capabilities. This
conclusion becomes obvious after viewing the hacked sites, which
displayed a banner claiming that the resource didn't correspond to NATO
cyber security standards. The banner also included the logo of NATO Cyber Defense Center in Tallinn and telephone numbers of the contact persons.
Also,
possessing some internet search skills proves to be enough to check
that the "FSB-controlled" Russian media reports were, in fact, secondary
information, since they provided only a digest of the wide discussion
on blogs and forums.
Pernik also believes that the attack on Ukrainian and NATO sites was carried out from a Georgian IP-address. In her opinion, it provides yet another evidence of Russian trace. Well, firstly, what a Georgian IP has to do with Russia? Secondly, there was no investigation. That's why Pernik cites an anonymous cyber expert, and it sounds as ridiculous as "FSB-controlled Russian media". There
was no explanation of the origin of the IP and it's not clear why the
IP is mentioned by an independent expert, while the NATO Center remains
silent.
A HUMILATING REPROACH FOR TALLINN
As
it happens, some Ukrainian experts we contacted on conditions of
anonymity are absolutely sure, that the sites of the Ukrainian
Prosecutor General and SBU were attacked from an Estonian IP-address. The experts say that this is why the Ukrainian authorities had to keep silence. Naturally,
Kiev saw the attack as a warning send by NATO Cyber Center to its
state-partners to inform them about the vulnerability of their internet
resources.
Pernik also tries to prove Russian involvement by saying that the incidents got a wide coverage only in Russian media. That's just not true, and anyone can check it after a bit of googling. It is hard to miss a publication of Jane's Defence magazine , which points out the incident That is a Humiliations for a country which Started to receive huge financial support to Develop cyber security after a serious cyber attack in 2 007.
It
should be noted that Tallinn was chosen as the NATO Cyber Defense
Center HQ due to Estonian pressing requests to ensure its cyber
security, caused by an outspread of computer attacks after the popular
protest followed the dismantling of a Soviet Soldier monument in 2007. At that time, Estonian government also blamed Russia and demanded NATO to defend the country against the cyber attacks.
So, who is the real culprit behind the attacks on Ukrainian, Russian and Baltic sites in November? The cyber security experts agree that it is very difficult to investigate the activities of hacker groups and individuals. Cyber
wars are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and it's almost
impossible to check, confirm or disprove the information on the
internet. That's why the state special services are collaborating with hackers or acting on their part.
Thanks
to Edward Snowden the world is now aware of the illegal actions of the
American special services, including computer piracy, stealing of
personal information and hacking foreign state and private informational
resources. As
a matter of fact, the US Cyber Command and NSA don't care about
keeping their work secret anymore - it's enough to remember the speech
delivered by Keith Alexander in Florida in the summer of 2013.
A SPUR TO HACKERS
As mentioned above, the cyber incidents got a wide coverage in the Ukrainian social networks and specialized hacker forums. The
popular opinion is that Anonymous Ukraine is a pseudonym for some
special service, probably even NSA or NATO Cyber Security Center
itself. It
is also believed that the cyber attacks were in fact carried out as
training for NATO Center experts in the course of the Steadfast Jazz
2013 exercises, which aimed at testing the methods on "dummies", who
could not provide an adequate response.
Another version states that the attack that involved NATO Cyber Center could have happen due to a computer mistake. Finally,
it may well be that NATO cyber security experts executed a prepared
scenario in cooperation with their counterparts from Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, Ukraine and Estonia.
It
is likely that we would never know who was behind these attacks -
Ukrainian hackers, NATO cyber security experts or someone else. However,
there is a general impression of a wide-scoped and sophistically
planned provocation, carried out by two centers in Estonia in order to
display Russia as an insidious cyber aggressor, draw some attention to
its activity and provide a reason for increasing NATO cyber security
budget.
Meanwhile, Russia is still behind the US and other NATO members in the sphere of cyber security. The announced formation of cyber units is still to happen and there is no news about cyber security exercises.
It is not a coincidence That Russia promoted an Initiative of UN limitation of the arms race in the informational sphere and offered other Countries to join the Convention of International Informational Security.
While
the US and NATO are paying great attention to cyber warfare and
refusing to treat other countries as equals, they, in fact, only
encourage the interest of terrorist organization in asymmetric response
and spur hackers all over the world. On
that background, Tallinn centers blaming Russia seems as a failed
attempt of shifting responsibility for strategic errors, technological
mistakes and wrong choice of partners. As
for the eloquence of the Estonian analysts, it is probably explained by
an uneasy conscience, which, as it is known, betrays itself.
Peter Adams < [email protected] >
No comments:
Post a Comment