NATO's fail in cyberspace

Public movement “Ukrainian Front” called on the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office to file criminal charges against the officers of NATO Tallinn Cyber Defense Centre which had arrived to Ukraine to wage information warfare.

According to the movement’s representatives, recent attacks on Ukrainian and Russian sites including websites of President Putin and Russian Central bank were carried out by a group of NATO hackers. To prove these accusations, Ukrainian Front published a photo of new Ukrainian Defense Minister Igor Tenyukh’s order mentioning that a team of Tallinn Cyber Defense Centre experts arrived to Kiev on a special flight of the U.S. Navy transport aircraft.

(http://zergulio.livejournal.com/1001144.html).

The team consists of 16 people and is in charge of hacker attacks, restricting access to the Russian-speaking media for the Ukrainians and blocking oppositional websites. Special attention is payed to information warfare in social networks.

Ukrainian authorities hope that NATO experts will be able to stop the breakdown in Ukrainian society in the presence of diversity in opinions and to put an end to the spread of information compromising Yatsenuk government.

Ukraine’s information space is actually very complicated. Disclosure of the information about snipers hired by opposition during the revolutionary protests on Maidan has led to a serious split in the ranks of the news government.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJHOSZ1rhQw).

Crimean referendum and Kiev inability to deal with the secession of the peninsula, primarily due to the reluctance of Ukrainian military to obey Tenyukh orders, force the leaders of Euromaidan to resort to even tougher measures to keep the situation under control. Brutal seizure of administrative buildings, murder of pro-Russian activists and persecution of Russian-speaking population ensue.

In such a situation the experts in information warfare could constitute a very important factor. However, NATO hackers first try was rather cheesy. The very first attack on the official website of the referendum in Crimea, carried out under the guise of “Ukrainskaya kybersotnya” (Ukrainian cyberteam) was disclosed by local programmers. The webpage press service revealed that the attack originated from the University of Illinois, located in Urbana-Champaign, U.S. It is noteworthy that in this town with a population of some 37,000 people there is a large number of  IP netmasks which greatly exceeds the needs of the city. Moreover the town has three airports, which is an evidence of overdeveloped infrastructure for a normal settlement. (http://lifenews.ru/news/129131)

Unprofessionalism of the U.S. IT-specialists not only casts doubt on the effectiveness of NATO information units, but also discredits the alliance’s non-interference policy towards the situation in Ukraine. Besides, in compliance with international law a cyber attack is considered as a criminal offense.

According to Russian media, (http://topwar.ru/41628-nato-razvyazyvaet-kibervoynu.html) Moscow has not a single doubt that Western IT-experts were behind the information attacks on Ukrainian and Russian websites. Particularly, Tallinn Cyber Defense Centre is mentioned. The key figures responsible for cyber crimes are also named: Director of the Centre Colonel Artur Suzik, spokeswoman Ms Kristiina Pennar, experts Mr Martin Gunther and Mr Alo Martensen.

Kremlin is especially irritated by Colonel Suzik, which graduated from High School of Military Engineers of the city of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg) only to “betray his oath” and defect to NATO. In the history of Russia there was no mercy for traitors…

Such intense interest to Tallinn Cyber Defense Centre is caused by the fact that since it’s creation the number of cyber attacks on information and telecommunication structure of the CIS countries has increased dramatically. For instance, during NATO exercises Cyber Coalition 2013 held last November websites from Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Baltic countries were subjected to hacker attacks. Websites of the Ukrainian government agencies were defaced to show a warning of non-compliance with NATO cyber security standards, placed on behalf of Tallin Cyber Defense Centre. Today this bravado of NATO experts turns against them. (http://news.softpedia.com/news/Ukrainian-Government-Websites-Apparently-Hacked-by-NATO-396784.shtml).

It’s clear that Moscow will not appeal to international organization to  demand an investigation of NATO IT-experts activities. Evidently, this area of international law is still underdeveloped. However, it’s also clear that Kremlin will not let those responsible for the information war go unpunished.

Furthermore, hacking implies secrecy and anonymity, otherwise any attack could turn against the one who is behind it, what was demonstrated by the events in Ukraine.