A Study On Russian Cyberwarfare Capabilities And Approach Towards Cybersecurity

Russia is among the world’s advanced cyber power states in cyberspace and is also the handful of states that have been making most out of cyber technologies.Reportedly,Russia have been conducting cyber operations around the world but mostly,Russia’s use of cyber power is believed to be centered around states within its sphere of influence.In this light,several high-profile cyber incidents have been attributed to Russian state actors.However,Russia have denied any allegations of misconduct in cyber sphere and have clearly stated that meddling in cyberspace of other nation-states contradicts Russian foreign policy.The central objective of this thesis is an attempt to answer the research question: What are Russia’s cyberwarfare capabilities and Russian approach towards cyber security? In order to answer this research question,this study employs a qualitative approach to research methodology.Chiefly,in order to ascertain Russia’s approach towards cybersecurity,it is important to determine Russia’s cyber posture.For this,examination of Russia’s information security doctrine and other Russian strategic documents is performed.The Russian official publications demonstrated Russia’s defensive posture on cyberspace where no mention of offensive cyber capabilities was observed.Similarly,it was important to ascertain military perspective about the same for which scholarship demonstrating view from Russia’s military scholars and officials was also made part of this study.Insights and knowledge from their study demonstrated significant influence of modern technological advancement in Russian military understanding of changing character of modern warfare,specifically,the means and methods of modern-day conflicts.In stark contrast to Russian official publication,military perspective showed clear inclination towards use of offensive cyber capabilities as part of modern warfare demonstrating offensive cyber posture.Similarly,in order to examine Russia’s cyberwarfare capabilities,this thesis considered taking case study approach wherein computer network attacks attributed to Russia namely the cases of Estonia,Georgia and Ukraine are made part of this research.The study not only demonstrated that Russia is known to use computer network operation as part of its modern warfare campaign to exert influence against a political adversary but also that Russia possesses highly sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.The limitation of this research mainly includes overwhelming western perspective on cyber incidents attributed to the Russian Federation due to very limited scholarship on the same in English medium from Russian scholars.This study has been compartmentalized into six chapters.The first chapter covers introductory part of this thesis.To be specific,this section comprises of the background of study where context of Russia’s cyberwarfare capabilities and Russia’s cyber posture is briefly discussed.Similarly,the research questions,objectives and significance of this study,as well as research methodology and literature review are also part of this introductory chapter.The second chapter has four subsections.First,it describes how proliferation of the internet coupled with rapid advancement of cyber-enabled technology has dramatically increased cyber dependency of modern society which in turn have increased cyber vulnerabilities of critical national infrastructures.This vulnerability has provided new avenues that is both cost effective and relatively easy to pursue for threat actors including nation-state entities to use cyber as a warfare domain for achieving strategic advantage against an adversary.The second subsection then briefly touches upon the core concepts of cyberspace,cyber-attacks and cyberwarfare.Building up on this,the third subsection provides an overview of how cyberspace has evolved into a battlefield and provides recent examples of conflict in this domain.Then the chapter caps off with discourse on cyberwarfare wherein scholarly arguments both in favor and against cyberwarfare are presented.Chapter three begins by providing the account of modern technology and its influence on contemporary Russian military thinking and understanding on changing character of modern warfare.Russian military scholars along with former and incumbent military officials increasingly highlight the significance of achieving political and military objectives using non-military means.In this regard,information warfare along with cyber enabled information operations are identified as modern tools that can be employed both in times of peace and war,one which does not require the deployment of troops into enemy territory.This section provided Russian military’s offensive cyber posture.The section that follows include comprehensive understanding of Russia’s strategic documents with regards to information security.It primarily includes study of updated information security doctrine along with Russia’s military doctrine and the conceptual views.These official Russian documents include Russia’s perspective both domestically and internationally to ensure international information security and maintaining international peace and stability in cybersphere.In essence,they provide a completely different outlook of Russia’s civilian perspective of cybersecurity,specifically,they portray Russia’s defensive cyber posture.The final section of this chapter includes three key instruments from Russian information security doctrine as a means to ensure Russia’s information security.The fourth chapter begins with a scholarly perspective on national cyber power.In light of which Russia’s national cyber power is weighed in global context of contemporary politics.While the United States has higher offensive cyber capability than Russia,it is identified that Russia’s Ru Net – the Russian version of the internet provides Russia with a much better defensive mechanism to withstand cyber aggression and therefore Russia has a more balanced offensive and defensive national cyber strength.The next section examines the case studies of offensive cyber operation in Estonia,Georgia and Ukraine to demonstrate Russia’s cyberwarfare capabilities.It is highlighted that all these three countries have a few things in common with Russia.They all lie within Russian sphere of influence and have political and economic interest tied to Russia.Furthermore,all three countries in question experienced computer network attacks at a time when they had political dispute with Russia.This provides Russia with a political motivation to conduct offensive cyber activities against them as a means to exert influence within its periphery.In addition to this,the mode of computer network attacks from Estonia to Ukraine have seen a dramatic improvement both in type of cyber attack conducted as well as on the sophistication of such attacks.All these factors weighed in demonstrated Russia’s significant cyber capability.Chapter five comprises of bilateral cooperation,differences in approach to cybersecurity and disagreements between the two great cyber powers,Russia and the United States on cyberspace issues.Firstly,key differences between Russian and American conception with regards to cyberspace and cyberwarfare is highlighted.This provides an insight on how Russia and the US have different views on cyberspace.The following section to this chapter provides contrasting approaches between Russia and the US when it comes to securing the cyberspace.First,while Russia advocates for a multilateral approach,one that involves the creation of an international treaty to ban military application of cyber weapons demonstrating Russia’s defensive cyber posture,the US on the other hand follows a domestic approach with increasing international collaboration between law enforcement agencies.Secondly,Russia and the US also differ on internet governance;where Russia believes in increasing governmental control over her cyberspace,the US firmly opposes this approach and advocates for free form of internet.In addition to this,this chapter also provides traces of bilateral cooperation between these great power in matters of cyberspace.The final chapter based on learnings and knowledge from the findings of this study caps off discussions in previous chapters and provides conclusion to this research.