Over the years, the world has grown accustomed to Russian hackers posing a severe threat to corporations and infrastructure. But now it looks like Russia is dealing with the same issue on a big scale, forcing President Vladimir Putin to call a meeting with the government’s security council.
Putin said on Friday that the frequency of cyberattacks on Russia by foreign “state structures” has increased several-fold and that Russia needs to strengthen its cyber defences by reducing reliance on foreign software and hardware.
“Targeted attempts are being made to disable the internet resources of Russia’s critical information infrastructure. Serious attacks have been launched against the official sites of government agencies. Attempts to illegally penetrate the corporate networks of leading Russian companies are much more frequent as well,” Putin said.
VTB, Russia’s second-largest bank, online marketplace Avito, e-commerce startup Wildberries, internet giant Yandex, food delivery company Delivery Club and video hosting service RuTube are among the notable targets of these cyberattacks.
Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications regulator, announced this week that a website storing the personal data of a number of organisations’ clients had been disabled. Meanwhile, VTB stated that although some clients’ phone details had been leaked, their cash was not at risk.
A data breach on Yandex’s food delivery app in early March exposed the personal information of over 58,000 customers, while another similar platform Delivery Club issued an apology statement to its users after it suffered a data leak.
Cutting Off The World
Putin said focusing on native technology and equipment is the greatest countermeasure, while simultaneously noting that sanctions have halted technical support for foreign software and hardware.
As reported by Reuters, Putin stated: “Restrictions on foreign IT, software and products have become one of the tools of sanctions pressure on Russia. A number of Western suppliers have unilaterally stopped technical support of their equipment in Russia.”
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Kremlin has blocked social media platforms to tighten its grip on the flow of information about the war. It has blocked major platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Moscow has long pushed to strengthen its internal internet infrastructure, even unplugging from the world internet last summer for tests. But the Ministry of Communications said that ordinary users did not notice any changes after the test was conducted.
At that time, the state-run Tass news agency said that the tests analysed the vulnerability of internet-of-things devices and included an exercise to test “Runet’s” ability to withstand external negative impacts.
Some experts reportedly predict that if Russia is shut off from US and European products for an extended period of time, it will turn to China for software and hardware.
According to Russian digital rights organisation Roskomsvoboda, cutting down Russia’s internet access could limit Russians’ access to factual information from abroad concerning the situation in Ukraine.
Cutting off Russian internet access might help the government, according to Roskomsvoboda, by providing a “suspicious and convenient excuse” to swiftly finish the process of isolating the [Russian internet] and the people of Russia from the rest of the world.
According to reports, despite rumours of a complete decoupling from the global internet and the threat of increased censorship within the country, the massive increase in VPN traffic from Russia, as well as efforts to provide access to information via the anonymous Tor browser are now clearly visible in Russia.
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