Inside Cyber Warfare - Jeffrey Carr [96]
Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI was investigating cyber break-ins at a wide range of sensitive government facilities, including several US national laboratories, NASA, some unnamed defense contractors, and various universities conducting sensitive research. The FBI was able to trace the penetrations back to Russian servers within 20 miles of Moscow. Senator Robert Bennett took it one step further and placed the blame squarely on the doorstep of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
A few years later it was China’s turn with the massive—and some say still ongoing—cyber espionage effort code-named Titan Rain.
Russia soon moved from what contemporary cyber warfare theory terms computer network exploitation (CNE) to computer network attack during the latter days of the second Chechen war of 1997–2001 in an effort to control information flow. Chechen targets included kavkaz.org and chechinpress.com (now defunct) and were of sufficient size to knock both sites off the air.
Following Chechnya were joint cyber-kinetic attacks in Estonia and Georgia, and cyber-only attacks in Kyrgyzstan and Lithuania. In July and August 2009, escalating violence in Ingushetia was accompanied by denial of service (Dos) attacks against the main voice of protest against the Kremlin-controlled ruling government: http://www.ingushetia.org. The owner of the original site, Ingushetia.ru, was killed by Ingush police while in custody in August 2008.
What follows is an examination of Russian military doctrine and influences in information warfare, of which cyber is a component.
The Foundation for Effective Politics (FEP)
The FEP was founded by Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky, born in Odessa on March 5, 1951. Pavlovsky self-identifies as a “political technologist,” which makes perfect sense in today’s connected world. He’s what Western technologists consider an early adopter, creating programs for the Russian Internet (RUNET) in its earliest days of existence, starting with the Russkiy Zhurnal and later the Internet-based ezines Gazeta.ru, Lenta.ru, and Inosmi.ru.
Pavlovsky’s leadership of FEP has been peppered with frequent Russian press articles that accuse him of dirty deeds supporting government power. For example, on December 4, 1997, an Obschchaya Gazeta article accused Pavlovsky of planting information detrimental to Boris Berezovskiy. The article reviewed Pavlovsky’s career path, pointing out his shift from Yeltsin opponent to Yeltsin supporter and his subsequent economic prosperity. On December 10, 1997, Moskovskiy Komsolets stated that Pavlovsky provided political analysis to government figures at the direction of Anatoliy Chubays, then head of the presidential administration.
A January 18, 1999, Ekspert article by Pavlovsky is quite prescient and suggests excellent connections. In the article, Pavlovsky states that Russian society demands a right-wing conservative government. As Pavlovsky says, “After a decade of unregulated, essentially uncontrolled changes in the country, a shift towards a strong authoritative state is preordained.” By August, Vladimir Putin was prime minister and by December he was acting president. Numerous Russian press articles from 1999 detail Pavlovsky’s rise as a trusted political operative who moved from supporting Yeltsin to Putin. Indeed, on December 24, 1999, Segodyna credited Pavlovsky with inspiring Putin’s new Center for Strategic Studies, which was tasked to work out plans for Russia’s future development.
Pavlovsky’s FEP was also an early force on the Russian Internet. FEP’s original website, FEP.ru, is no longer active, but archived information shows the website active from 1998 through 2007. The site touts FEP’s expertise in Internet operations, providing examples of sites FEP developed supporting Russian political figures and their campaigns. However, contemporaneous press articles accuse Pavlovsky of disseminating disinformation via the same routes.
A few years later, the Kremlin favored the publishing houses of Konstantin Rykov