RUSSIA 🇷🇺 Thread: Wikileaks=FSB front, UKRAINE?, SNOWED LIED; NATO Aggression; Trump = Putins B!tch
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@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3@Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @Ed MOTHERfukkING G @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @Ed MOTHERfukkING G @dtownreppin214
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @Ed MOTHERfukkING G @dtownreppin214
John McCain: Russia threat is dead serious. Montenegro coup and murder plot proves it.
Vladimir Putin’s Russia is on the offensive against Western democracy. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014. Russia attacked America’s 2016 election, attempted to interfere in France’s 2017 election, and is expected to do the same in German and other future European elections.
But perhaps the most disturbing indication of Putin’s violent ambitions is what happened in October 2016 in the small Balkan country of Montenegro, when Russian intelligence operatives Russia viewed Montenegro’s pursuit of European Union and NATO membership as both insulting and threatening. After all, Montenegro was once part of Russia’s traditional Slavic ally, Serbia. The country has long been a favorite for Russian tourists. Indeed, Russian politicians and oligarchs are reported to own as much as 40% of the real estate in Montenegro.
Montenegro is also strategically located on the Adriatic Sea. Russia unsuccessfully sought a naval base in Montenegro a few years ago. But if Montenegro joined NATO following the election, the entire Adriatic Sea would fall within NATO’s borders.
Montenegro’s entry into NATO would also send a signal that membership was a real possibility for other nations of the Western Balkans. That's why, in Russia’s eyes, Montenegro’s Oct. 16 election was a last chance to stop it from joining NATO and to reassert Russian influence in southeastern Europe. Few would have guessed how far Russia was willing to go. But now we know.
This month, a Montenegrin court accepted indictments against two Russians and 12 other people for their roles in the coup attempt. The American people must be aware of the allegations made in these indictments, which are now public. Pieced together, they reveal not only another blatant attack on democracy by the Russian government, but also an unmistakable warning that Putin will do whatever it takes to achieve his ambition to restore the Russian empire.
According to the indictments, two members of the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, took over a plot to destabilize Montenegro sometime in 2016 in league with Montenegrin opposition politicians and Serbian nationalists. One of the leading Serb plotters was brought to Moscow multiple times, once on a ticket paid for with funds sent from a Western Union on the same street as GRU headquarters in Moscow.
The plan was this:
As Election Day protests were under way in front of the Montenegrin parliament, a group of 50 armed men, recruited by the Russian GRU agents and wearing police uniforms, would ambush and kill the members of Montenegro’s Special Anti-Terrorist Unit to prevent them from interfering with the coup. The armed men would then proceed to the parliament, where they'd begin shooting at members of the police defending the building.
Led by the coup plotters, the protesters would then storm parliament and declare victory for the opposition. Within 48 hours, a new government would be formed and arrests would be made across the capital, including of Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. If the prime minister could not be captured, he'd be killed.
It appears the plot might even have involved trying to blame the United States for the violence. An Orlando company was contacted about providing security services in the Montenegrin capital during the election. One can only speculate that American security personnel on the ground during a coup would have made excellent patsies for stories on Sputnik and Russia Today.
Fortunately, the plan never got off the ground. Several days before Election Day, one of the plotters got cold feet and informed the Montenegrin authorities. Arrests were made, and the plot was disrupted. In the aftermath, the Russian GRU agents tried to hire an assassin to kill Montenegro’s prime minister, but to no avail. The agents eventually made their way back to Moscow.
This heinous plot should be a warning to every American that we cannot treat Russia’s interference in our 2016 election as an isolated incident. We have to stop looking at this through the warped lens of politics and see this attack on our democracy for what it is: just one phase of Putin’s long-term campaign to weaken the United States, to destabilize Europe, to break the NATO alliance, to undermine confidence in Western values, and to erode any and all resistance to his dangerous view of the world.
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
It won’t be long before Putin takes interest in another American election. The victim may be a Republican. It may be a Democrat. To Putin, it won’t matter as long as he achieves his dark and divisive goals.
We must take our own side in this fight — not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. The Senate passed strong new sanctions against Russia this month by an overwhelming 97-2 vote. I hope the House will delay no further, send this bill to the president, and send a message to Vladimir Putin that America will stand strong in defense of our democracy.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.
U.S. officials say Russian government hackers have penetrated energy and nuclear company business networks
Russian government hackers were behind recent cyber-intrusions into the business systems of U.S. nuclear power and other energy companies in what appears to be an effort to assess their networks, according to U.S. government officials.
The U.S. officials said there is no evidence the hackers breached or disrupted the core systems controlling operations at the plants, so the public was not at risk. Rather, they said, the hackers broke into systems dealing with business and administrative tasks, such as personnel.
At the end of June, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security sent a joint alert to the energy sector stating that “advanced, persistent threat actors” — a euphemism for sophisticated foreign hackers — were stealing network log-in and password information to gain a foothold in company networks. The agencies did not name Russia.
The campaign marks the first time Russian government hackers are known to have wormed their way into the networks of American nuclear power companies, several U.S. and industry officials said. And the penetration could be a sign that Russia is seeking to lay the groundwork for more damaging hacks.
The National Security Agency has detected specific activity by the Russian spy agency, the FSB, targeting the energy firms, according to two officials. The NSA declined to comment. The intrusions have been previously reported but not the attribution to Russia by U.S. officials.
The joint alert from the FBI and DHS, first reported by Reuters on June 30, said the hackers have been targeting the industry since at least May. Several days earlier, E & E News, an energy trade publication, had reported that U.S. authorities were investigating cyber-intrusions affecting multiple nuclear-power-generation sites.
[Ukraine’s ransomware attack was a ruse to hide culprit’s identity, researchers say]
The malicious activity comes as President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday acknowledged “the challenges of cyberthreats” and “agreed to explore creating a framework” to better deal with them, including those that harm critical infrastructure such as nuclear energy, according to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in remarks to reporters. On Saturday, Putin told reporters that he and Trump agreed to set up a working group “on the subject of jointly controlling security in cyberspace.”
The Russian government, which is the United States’ top adversary in cyberspace, targeted U.S. infrastructure in a wide-ranging campaign in 2014.
Moscow has demonstrated how much damage it can do in other countries when it goes after energy systems.
In December 2015, Russian hackers disrupted the electric system in Ukraine, plunging 225,000 customers into darkness. Last December, they tested a new cyberweapon in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, capable of disrupting power grids around the world.
The recent activity follows the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that the Kremlin was behind a campaign to interfere with the 2016 election through hacking and information warfare. Putin has denied such meddling.
Play Video 0:54
Putin says Trump was 'satisfied' with his election meddling denials
Speaking at the end of a the Group of 20 summit in Germany on July 8, President Vladimir Putin said he thought President Trump had been satisfied with his assertions that Russia had not meddled in the U.S. presidential election. Putin said he believed he had been able to establish a personal relationship with Trump, and that the initial groundwork had been laid for an improvement in U.S.-Russian ties.(Reuters)
The working group that is being set up will also address “how to prevent interference in the domestic affairs of foreign states, primarily in Russia and the U.S.,” Putin said.
The U.S. officials all stressed that the latest intrusions did not affect systems that control the production of nuclear or electric power.
“There is no indication of a threat to public safety, as any potential impact appears to be limited to administrative and business networks,” the DHS and FBI said in a joint statement Friday.
One nuclear power company that was penetrated, Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corp. in Kansas, issued a statement saying that “there has been absolutely no operational impact to Wolf Creek.” The reason is that the plant’s operational computer systems are completely separate from the corporate network, spokeswoman Jenny Hageman said. “The safety and control systems for the nuclear reactor and other vital plant components are not connected to business networks or the Internet,” she said.
In general, the nation’s 100 or so commercial nuclear power plants are safer from cyberattack than other energy plants because they isolate their control systems from the open Internet, said Bill Gross, director of incident preparedness at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
According to U.S. officials, fewer than a dozen energy companies, including several nuclear energy firms, were affected by the latest Russian cyber-reconnaissance campaign.
[Companies struggle to recover after massive cyberattack with ransom demands]
While nuclear-power companies are fairly well protected, electric-power plants are less so, experts said.
“It’s a plausible scenario that the adversaries in electric power business networks could pivot to the industrial networks,” said Robert M. Lee, founder and chief executive of Dragos, a cyberfirm that focuses on industrial control systems. “But it’s still not a trivial matter to compromise the industrial systems.”
Dragos last month issued a report analyzing a new Russian cyberweapon that can disrupt electric power grids. Dubbed CrashOverride, the malware is known to have affected only one energy system — in Ukraine in December. But with modifications, it could be deployed against U.S. electric grids, Dragos concluded.
While the current campaign shows no signs — at least not yet — of disrupting the companies’ operations, it is not clear what the adversary’s true motive is, officials said.
“In some sense, this could be significant if this is precursor planning,” said one U.S. official, who like others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “That’s what all cyber bad guys do. They do reconnaissance and they try to establish a presence and maintain access. This in my mind was a reconnaissance effort — to scope things out and figure out” points of entry.
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The same actor has also targeted energy and other critical sector firms in Turkey and Ireland, said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at FireEye, a cyberthreat-intelligence firm. He added that the firm has found evidence that the adversary has been hacking into global energy firms since at least 2015.
In their alert, the DHS and FBI stated that the hackers are using spearphishing emails and “watering hole” techniques to ensnare victims. A spearphish targets a user with an authentic-looking email that contains attachments or links embedded with malware. In this case, the hackers often used Microsoft Word attachments that appeared to be legitimate résumés from job applicants, the agencies said. In a watering-hole attack, an unsuspecting victim navigates to a website laced with malware, infecting his or her computer. In both cases, the adversary sought to collect victims’ log-in and password data so that they could sneak into the network and poke around.
Galina Antova, co-founder of the cyberfirm Claroty, said: “There’s no need for hype and hysteria, but this is an issue that should be taken seriously because of the state of the industrial networks” — in particular the non-nuclear systems.
The current cyber-campaign, dubbed Palmetto Fusion by the government, is significant as a warning, officials said. “It signals an ability to get into a system and potentially have a continued presence there, which at a future date, at someone else’s determination, might be exploited to have an effect” that could be particularly disruptive.
David Filipov and Damian Paletta in Hamburg contributed to this report.
Russian Internet Pioneer Nosik Dead Of Suspected Heart Attack
Well-known Russian journalist, blogger, and Internet pioneer Anton Nosik has died in Moscow at the age of 51.
Nosik's friend and current owner of The Moscow Times and Vedomosti newspaper, Demyan Kudryavtsev, posted on Twitter on July 9 that Nosik died during the night of July 8-9.
According to preliminary information, Nosik died of a sudden heart attack.
Nosik played important roles in the founding of several pioneering Russian Internet projects, including Newsru.com, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.ru.
In recent years, he published a blog on the website of Ekho Moskvy.
In 2016, Nosik was fined 300,000 rubles for a blog post in which he criticized Russia's military intervention in the war in Syria and compared the government of President Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany.
With reporting by the BBC
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
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Opinion | The Power of the Russian State vs. a Librarian
Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working With Russian Intelligence
Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working With Russian Intelligence
Emails show the software-security maker developed products for the FSB and accompanied agents on raids.
More stories by Jordan RobertsonJuly 11, 2017, 5:00 AM EDT
Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky speaks at a plenary meeting titled “Cybersecurity in the Face of New Challenges and Threats,” part of the Finopolis 2016 forum of innovative financial technologies, in Kazan, Russia.
Photographer: Getty Images
Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab boasts 400 million users worldwide. As many as 200 million may not know it. The huge reach of Kaspersky’s technology is partly the result of licensing agreements that allow customers to quietly embed the software in everything from firewalls to sensitive telecommunications equipment—none of which carry the Kaspersky name.
That success is starting to worry U.S. national security officials concerned about the company’s links to the Russian government. In early May six U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agency chiefs were asked in an open Senate hearing whether they’d let their networks use Kaspersky software, often found on Best Buy shelves. The answer was a unanimous and resounding no. The question, from Florida Republican Marco Rubio, came out of nowhere, often a sign a senator is trying to indirectly draw attention to something learned in classified briefings.
Eugene Kaspersky took to Reddit to respond. Claims about Kaspersky Lab’s ties to the Kremlin are “unfounded conspiracy theories” and “total BS,” the company’s boisterous, barrel-chested chief executive officer wrote. While the U.S. government hasn’t disclosed any evidence of the ties, internal company emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek show that Kaspersky Lab has maintained a much closer working relationship with Russia’s main intelligence agency, the FSB, than it has publicly admitted. It has developed security technology at the spy agency’s behest and worked on joint projects the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public.
Most major cybersecurity companies maintain close ties to home governments, but the emails are at odds with Kaspersky Lab’s carefully controlled image of being free from Moscow’s influence. Kaspersky’s work with Russian intelligence could scare off business in Western Europe and the U.S., where Russian cyber operations have grown increasingly aggressive, including attempts to influence elections. Western Europe and the U.S. accounted for $374 million of the company’s $633 million in sales in 2016, according to researcher International Data Corp.
“When statements are taken out of context, anything can be manipulated to serve an agenda,” the company said in a statement. “Kaspersky Lab has always acknowledged that it provides appropriate products and services to governments around the world to protect those organizations from cyberthreats, but it does not have any unethical ties or affiliations with any government, including Russia.”
Antivirus companies are especially delicate because the products they make have access to every file on the computers they protect. The software also regularly communicates with the maker to receive updates, which security experts say could theoretically provide access to sensitive users such as government agencies, banks, and internet companies. Adding to the U.S. government’s jitters, Kaspersky recently has developed products designed to help run critical infrastructure such as power grids.
The previously unreported emails, from October 2009, are from a thread between Eugene Kaspersky and senior staff. In Russian, Kaspersky outlines a project undertaken in secret a year earlier “per a big request on the Lubyanka side,” a reference to the FSB offices. Kaspersky Lab confirmed the emails are authentic.
The software that the CEO was referring to had the stated purpose of protecting clients, including the Russian government, from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but its scope went further. Kaspersky Lab would also cooperate with internet hosting companies to locate bad actors and block their attacks, while assisting with “active countermeasures,” a capability so sensitive that Kaspersky advised his staff to keep it secret.
“The project includes both technology to protect against attacks (filters) as well as interaction with the hosters (‘spreading’ of sacrifice) and active countermeasures (about which, we keep quiet) and so on,” Kaspersky wrote in one of the emails.
“Active countermeasures” is a term of art among security professionals, often referring to hacking the hackers, or shutting down their computers with malware or other tricks. In this case, Kaspersky may have been referring to something even more rare in the security world. A person familiar with the company’s anti-DDoS system says it’s made up of two parts. The first consists of traditional defensive techniques, including rerouting malicious traffic to servers that can harmlessly absorb it. The second part is more unusual: Kaspersky provides the FSB with real-time intelligence on the hackers’ location and sends experts to accompany the FSB and Russian police when they conduct raids. That’s what Kaspersky was referring to in the emails, says the person familiar with the system. They weren’t just hacking the hackers; they were banging down the doors.
The project lead was Kaspersky Lab’s chief legal officer, Igor Chekunov, a former policeman and KGB officer. Chekunov is the point man for technical support to the FSB and other Russian agencies, say three people familiar with his role, and that includes gathering identifying data from customers’ computers. One Kaspersky Lab employee who used to ride along with Russian agents on raids was Ruslan Stoyanov, whose technology underpinned the company’s anti-DDoS efforts, says the person familiar with the program. Stoyanov previously worked in the Interior Ministry’s cybercrime unit. In December he and a senior FSB cyber investigator were arrested on treason charges, adding a bizarre twist to the company’s relationship to the government. Kaspersky Lab has said the case involved allegations of wrongdoing before Stoyanov worked for the company. Stoyanov couldn’t be reached for comment.
In the emails, Kaspersky said the aim of the project for the FSB was to turn the anti-DDoS technology into a mass-market product for businesses. “In the future the project may become one of the items on the list of services that we provide to corporate customers,” he wrote. Kaspersky now sells its DDoS protection service to large companies, installing sensors directly inside customers’ networks. The company’s website contains a large red notice that it’s not available in the U.S. or Canada.
The U.S. government hasn’t identified any evidence connecting Kaspersky Lab to Russia’s spy agencies, even as it continues to turn up the heat. In June, FBI agents visited a number of the company’s U.S. employees at their homes, asking to whom they reported and how much guidance they received from Kaspersky’s Moscow headquarters. And a bill was introduced in Congress that would ban the U.S. military from using any Kaspersky products, with one senator calling ties between the company and the Kremlin “very alarming.” Russia’s communications minister promptly threatened sanctions if the measure passed.
Indeed, many in Russia see the anti-Kaspersky campaign as politics with a dash of protectionism. “This is quite useless to find any real evidence, any real cases where Kaspersky Lab would violate their privacy policies and transfer some data from U.S. customers, from U.S. enterprise clients, to Russian intelligence or FSB,” says Oleg Demidov, a consultant for researcher PIR Center in Moscow who studies Russian cyberattacks. “There are no such cases. At least, they are not publicly discussed.”
There’s another possibility, given Kaspersky Lab’s success at embedding its products in sensitive locations. Last year, Eugene Kaspersky announced the launch of the company’s secure operating system, KasperskyOS, designed to run systems that control electrical grids, factories, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly circulated a warning that the product could let Russian government hackers disable those systems, a claim Kaspersky denied.
Fourteen years in development, Kaspersky Lab’s secure OS is designed to be easily adaptable for the internet of things, everything from web-connected cameras to cars. That could be a great business model for the Russian company. U.S. national security officials seem determined to make sure it isn’t. —With Carol Matlack
Kaspersky Lab Has Been Working With Russian Intelligence
Emails show the software-security maker developed products for the FSB and accompanied agents on raids.
More stories by Jordan RobertsonJuly 11, 2017, 5:00 AM EDT
Kaspersky Lab CEO Eugene Kaspersky speaks at a plenary meeting titled “Cybersecurity in the Face of New Challenges and Threats,” part of the Finopolis 2016 forum of innovative financial technologies, in Kazan, Russia.
Photographer: Getty Images
Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab boasts 400 million users worldwide. As many as 200 million may not know it. The huge reach of Kaspersky’s technology is partly the result of licensing agreements that allow customers to quietly embed the software in everything from firewalls to sensitive telecommunications equipment—none of which carry the Kaspersky name.
That success is starting to worry U.S. national security officials concerned about the company’s links to the Russian government. In early May six U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agency chiefs were asked in an open Senate hearing whether they’d let their networks use Kaspersky software, often found on Best Buy shelves. The answer was a unanimous and resounding no. The question, from Florida Republican Marco Rubio, came out of nowhere, often a sign a senator is trying to indirectly draw attention to something learned in classified briefings.
Eugene Kaspersky took to Reddit to respond. Claims about Kaspersky Lab’s ties to the Kremlin are “unfounded conspiracy theories” and “total BS,” the company’s boisterous, barrel-chested chief executive officer wrote. While the U.S. government hasn’t disclosed any evidence of the ties, internal company emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek show that Kaspersky Lab has maintained a much closer working relationship with Russia’s main intelligence agency, the FSB, than it has publicly admitted. It has developed security technology at the spy agency’s behest and worked on joint projects the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public.
Most major cybersecurity companies maintain close ties to home governments, but the emails are at odds with Kaspersky Lab’s carefully controlled image of being free from Moscow’s influence. Kaspersky’s work with Russian intelligence could scare off business in Western Europe and the U.S., where Russian cyber operations have grown increasingly aggressive, including attempts to influence elections. Western Europe and the U.S. accounted for $374 million of the company’s $633 million in sales in 2016, according to researcher International Data Corp.
“When statements are taken out of context, anything can be manipulated to serve an agenda,” the company said in a statement. “Kaspersky Lab has always acknowledged that it provides appropriate products and services to governments around the world to protect those organizations from cyberthreats, but it does not have any unethical ties or affiliations with any government, including Russia.”
Antivirus companies are especially delicate because the products they make have access to every file on the computers they protect. The software also regularly communicates with the maker to receive updates, which security experts say could theoretically provide access to sensitive users such as government agencies, banks, and internet companies. Adding to the U.S. government’s jitters, Kaspersky recently has developed products designed to help run critical infrastructure such as power grids.
The previously unreported emails, from October 2009, are from a thread between Eugene Kaspersky and senior staff. In Russian, Kaspersky outlines a project undertaken in secret a year earlier “per a big request on the Lubyanka side,” a reference to the FSB offices. Kaspersky Lab confirmed the emails are authentic.
The software that the CEO was referring to had the stated purpose of protecting clients, including the Russian government, from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, but its scope went further. Kaspersky Lab would also cooperate with internet hosting companies to locate bad actors and block their attacks, while assisting with “active countermeasures,” a capability so sensitive that Kaspersky advised his staff to keep it secret.
“The project includes both technology to protect against attacks (filters) as well as interaction with the hosters (‘spreading’ of sacrifice) and active countermeasures (about which, we keep quiet) and so on,” Kaspersky wrote in one of the emails.
“Active countermeasures” is a term of art among security professionals, often referring to hacking the hackers, or shutting down their computers with malware or other tricks. In this case, Kaspersky may have been referring to something even more rare in the security world. A person familiar with the company’s anti-DDoS system says it’s made up of two parts. The first consists of traditional defensive techniques, including rerouting malicious traffic to servers that can harmlessly absorb it. The second part is more unusual: Kaspersky provides the FSB with real-time intelligence on the hackers’ location and sends experts to accompany the FSB and Russian police when they conduct raids. That’s what Kaspersky was referring to in the emails, says the person familiar with the system. They weren’t just hacking the hackers; they were banging down the doors.
The project lead was Kaspersky Lab’s chief legal officer, Igor Chekunov, a former policeman and KGB officer. Chekunov is the point man for technical support to the FSB and other Russian agencies, say three people familiar with his role, and that includes gathering identifying data from customers’ computers. One Kaspersky Lab employee who used to ride along with Russian agents on raids was Ruslan Stoyanov, whose technology underpinned the company’s anti-DDoS efforts, says the person familiar with the program. Stoyanov previously worked in the Interior Ministry’s cybercrime unit. In December he and a senior FSB cyber investigator were arrested on treason charges, adding a bizarre twist to the company’s relationship to the government. Kaspersky Lab has said the case involved allegations of wrongdoing before Stoyanov worked for the company. Stoyanov couldn’t be reached for comment.
In the emails, Kaspersky said the aim of the project for the FSB was to turn the anti-DDoS technology into a mass-market product for businesses. “In the future the project may become one of the items on the list of services that we provide to corporate customers,” he wrote. Kaspersky now sells its DDoS protection service to large companies, installing sensors directly inside customers’ networks. The company’s website contains a large red notice that it’s not available in the U.S. or Canada.
The U.S. government hasn’t identified any evidence connecting Kaspersky Lab to Russia’s spy agencies, even as it continues to turn up the heat. In June, FBI agents visited a number of the company’s U.S. employees at their homes, asking to whom they reported and how much guidance they received from Kaspersky’s Moscow headquarters. And a bill was introduced in Congress that would ban the U.S. military from using any Kaspersky products, with one senator calling ties between the company and the Kremlin “very alarming.” Russia’s communications minister promptly threatened sanctions if the measure passed.
Indeed, many in Russia see the anti-Kaspersky campaign as politics with a dash of protectionism. “This is quite useless to find any real evidence, any real cases where Kaspersky Lab would violate their privacy policies and transfer some data from U.S. customers, from U.S. enterprise clients, to Russian intelligence or FSB,” says Oleg Demidov, a consultant for researcher PIR Center in Moscow who studies Russian cyberattacks. “There are no such cases. At least, they are not publicly discussed.”
There’s another possibility, given Kaspersky Lab’s success at embedding its products in sensitive locations. Last year, Eugene Kaspersky announced the launch of the company’s secure operating system, KasperskyOS, designed to run systems that control electrical grids, factories, pipelines, and other critical infrastructure. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency reportedly circulated a warning that the product could let Russian government hackers disable those systems, a claim Kaspersky denied.
Fourteen years in development, Kaspersky Lab’s secure OS is designed to be easily adaptable for the internet of things, everything from web-connected cameras to cars. That could be a great business model for the Russian company. U.S. national security officials seem determined to make sure it isn’t. —With Carol Matlack
Opinion | National security figures launch project to counter Russian mischief
National security figures launch project to counter Russian mischief
President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 Summit in Hamburg. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
Amid all the controversy over Russian hacking, interference and propaganda efforts in the United States and Europe, there’s a growing concern among national security leaders that not enough is being done to stop the efforts. That’s why a large group of senior figures from both parties is launching a new effort to track and ultimately counter Russian political meddling, cyber-mischief and fake news.
The roster of figures who have signed onto the new project, called the Alliance for Securing Democracy, is a who’s who of former senior national security officials from both parties. The advisory council includes former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff; former acting CIA director Michael Morell; former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers; Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO supreme Allied commander, Europe; Jake Sullivan, former national security adviser to Joe Biden; and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
The project will be housed at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and will be run day to day by a staff led by Laura Rosenberger, a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, and Jamie Fly, former national security counselor to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
“This threat to our democracy is a national security issue. Russia is waging a war on us. They are using different kinds of weapons than we are used to in a war,” Rosenberger said. “We need to do a much better job understanding the tools the Russians are using and that others could use in the future to undermine democratic institutions and we need to work closer with our European allies who also are subjected to this threat.”
Play Video 2:38
What we know about Donald Trump Jr.'s Russia meeting
Donald Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton during his father's presidential campaign, after being told the information was "part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump."(Video: Elyse Samuels, Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The idea is to create a platform and repository of information about Russian political influence activities in the United States and Europe that can be the basis for cooperation and a resource for analysts on both sides of the Atlantic to push back against Russian meddling.
The project aims to be able to eventually map out Russian disinformation on social networks, cyber-efforts, financial flows, broader state-level cooperation and even Russian government support for far-left or far-right parties in other countries.
“In a perfect world, we would have a national commission that would be looking into exactly what happened, exactly what did the Russians do and what can we do as a nation to defend ourselves going forward and deter Putin from ever doing this again,” Morell told me. “We all know this is not going to happen, so things like the GMF effort are hugely important to fill the gap.”
One of the first outputs, coming soon, is going to be an online digital dashboard that will allow for tracking of Russian disinformation through fake news stories as well as narratives being pushed by Russian-sponsored social media figures. The project will attempt to map how Russian government-promoted information is spread though the American and European media landscapes.
“The Russians are playing in a broader scope of issues here than just the election,” Morell said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Russians are trying to divide us on issues from gay rights to race.”
The goal of the project is not to re-litigate the 2016 presidential election or to investigate the issue of whether the Trump campaign either colluded or was used by Russia as part of its interference campaign. The premise is that the Russian interference is ongoing and that not enough is being done to understand and ultimately counter it.
“It’s time for people who care about this issue to drop the partisanship and come together on this,” said Chertoff. “The closer we get to 2018 and we don’t see a huge amount of activity to get prepared, the more dire this is.”
The project also doesn’t want to overlap with the various investigations ongoing by the FBI and several congressional committees. But the premise is that more research can actually spur more U.S. government and congressional action to increase awareness, deterrence and resilience in the face of ongoing Russian efforts.
“Part of the problem is the administration hasn’t been presented yet with a set of recommendations about how to confront this problem,” said Fly. “The jury is still out on whether this administration will be willing to do the things necessary to secure our democracy.”
National security figures launch project to counter Russian mischief
Amid all the controversy over Russian hacking, interference and propaganda efforts in the United States and Europe, there’s a growing concern among national security leaders that not enough is being done to stop the efforts. That’s why a large group of senior figures from both parties is launching a new effort to track and ultimately counter Russian political meddling, cyber-mischief and fake news.
The roster of figures who have signed onto the new project, called the Alliance for Securing Democracy, is a who’s who of former senior national security officials from both parties. The advisory council includes former Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff; former acting CIA director Michael Morell; former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers; Adm. James Stavridis, former NATO supreme Allied commander, Europe; Jake Sullivan, former national security adviser to Joe Biden; and former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves.
The project will be housed at the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and will be run day to day by a staff led by Laura Rosenberger, a former senior State Department official in the Obama administration, and Jamie Fly, former national security counselor to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
“This threat to our democracy is a national security issue. Russia is waging a war on us. They are using different kinds of weapons than we are used to in a war,” Rosenberger said. “We need to do a much better job understanding the tools the Russians are using and that others could use in the future to undermine democratic institutions and we need to work closer with our European allies who also are subjected to this threat.”
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The idea is to create a platform and repository of information about Russian political influence activities in the United States and Europe that can be the basis for cooperation and a resource for analysts on both sides of the Atlantic to push back against Russian meddling.
The project aims to be able to eventually map out Russian disinformation on social networks, cyber-efforts, financial flows, broader state-level cooperation and even Russian government support for far-left or far-right parties in other countries.
“In a perfect world, we would have a national commission that would be looking into exactly what happened, exactly what did the Russians do and what can we do as a nation to defend ourselves going forward and deter Putin from ever doing this again,” Morell told me. “We all know this is not going to happen, so things like the GMF effort are hugely important to fill the gap.”
One of the first outputs, coming soon, is going to be an online digital dashboard that will allow for tracking of Russian disinformation through fake news stories as well as narratives being pushed by Russian-sponsored social media figures. The project will attempt to map how Russian government-promoted information is spread though the American and European media landscapes.
“The Russians are playing in a broader scope of issues here than just the election,” Morell said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the Russians are trying to divide us on issues from gay rights to race.”
The goal of the project is not to re-litigate the 2016 presidential election or to investigate the issue of whether the Trump campaign either colluded or was used by Russia as part of its interference campaign. The premise is that the Russian interference is ongoing and that not enough is being done to understand and ultimately counter it.
“It’s time for people who care about this issue to drop the partisanship and come together on this,” said Chertoff. “The closer we get to 2018 and we don’t see a huge amount of activity to get prepared, the more dire this is.”
The project also doesn’t want to overlap with the various investigations ongoing by the FBI and several congressional committees. But the premise is that more research can actually spur more U.S. government and congressional action to increase awareness, deterrence and resilience in the face of ongoing Russian efforts.
“Part of the problem is the administration hasn’t been presented yet with a set of recommendations about how to confront this problem,” said Fly. “The jury is still out on whether this administration will be willing to do the things necessary to secure our democracy.”