The NATO Secretary General made an interesting statement. According to him, cyber attacks may in some instances be interpreted as a challenge for the entire North Atlantic Alliance. The call will follow the answer: “a Serious cyber attack could be categorized as a precedent for the Alliance. Then NATO can and should respond…”
As stated Jens Stoltenberg, in the future the Alliance can respond to cyber attacks with the deployment of conventional weapons, writes RIA “Novosti”. “A serious cyber attack could be categorized as a precedent for the Alliance. Then NATO can and will have to respond,” Stoltenberg told the newspaper “Bild”.
“As this will depend on the severity of the attack,” — said the NATO Secretary General.
He also said that NATO needs to adapt to an increasingly complex series of threats. That is why the member States of the Alliance and agreed to defend against attacks in cyberspace as well as against attacks on land, air and sea.
You said about “adapt” said not just. The fact that the Alliance does not yet have a strategy to fight the enemy in cyberspace. This writes David Sanger in the newspaper “new York times”.
In the title of his article mentions “Russian hackers”. According to the author, Putin’s invisible soldiers are everywhere, from Ukraine to the Baltic States, and even climbed to Finland with Sweden. The latter interest probably stems from the fact that Russia did not want the traditionally neutral Swedes and Finns closer to NATO. On the days when NATO conducted naval exercises, including in Finland, hackers disabled the website of the Ministry of defence of Finland.
The author also assures the public that the Russian was spying electronically against the Dutch Commission investigating the disaster Malaysian airliner Boeing.
And in the German intelligence service BND told the American officials that Russian hackers are behind the cyber attacks aimed at the German steel industry.
Estonia is currently the NATO center for the study of the vulnerabilities of cyberspace in the Alliance. Here we study possible responses to the attack. It is believed that the Western Alliance has yet to develop a strategy to counter an increasingly aggressive Russia’s actions in cyberspace.” Apparently, the journalist agrees with this, since it resembles: Yes, a popular place for conferences and accepted the documents, but any serious war plans, in addition to blocking their own networks of Alliance, does not exist. Russia, China and Iran carry out more sophisticated offensive operations in cyberspace, but NATO does not even have a common mechanism of response. And this gap “contrasts sharply” with the NATO strategy adopted in combating “the more familiar threats.”
But two years ago, NATO declared that the Alliance could equate cyber attacks against one of its member States to an armed attack. And all NATO members will have to answer to the aggressor. And yet, when we are talking only about the deterrence of espionage and attacks European computer networks filed every week, the command of NATO, it seems, is not ready to accept the aforementioned “aggressive” countermeasures, says Sanger. Jens Stoltenberg says no wonder that the Alliance in cyberspace needs to “defend” themselves (not attack). It’s kind of obsolete strategy, another of the twentieth century, when no attacks and there was no trace. That is why James Lewis of the Center for strategic and international studies in Washington and said, what the Russians can do whatever they want: they know that there will be “no response”. In addition, Russian specialists are able to cool to hide the ends in water, for example, as they did at the end of 2015, “attacking the power grid of Ukraine”. There’s even American intelligence couldn’t understand.
“The biggest problem in cyberspace is restraint,” says Mr. Ilves, President of Estonia. He raises the problem of preventing cyber conflict on one of the main places in politics. “We talked about the need to combat them [<url>] in the framework of NATO for several years”, — quotes the President of the journalist. Ilves fears Russian hackers or another state will soon move to the next level of invasion: will “subtly manipulated” medical records, operations, weapons systems and navigation data.
“The answer is” hackers will add, it is hardly possible for all the Alliance, and especially the response in the form of the use of traditional weapons. Understands Stoltenberg, understand, and others. So statements sound serious but more like shaking the air. And strategy nowhere to take, because the enemy is invisible. Even the vaunted us intelligence are often unable to understand where it came cyber attack. Russian can suspect, you can assign them the main enemy, but to start a real war because of the suspicion it would be the height of folly.
Some Russian experts, however, are seriously sounding the alarm, and even suggest to prepare for war. This is not a joke and not a duck.
The independent expert of the Association of military political scientists Alexander perendzhiev said in an interview with “Free press” that the international community needs to prepare for a global war.
“At first glance, — he noted, — it seems that lately Stoltenberg mad. Of course, he performs some kind of political order. He set the task, and he does it. I am sure that the activity Stoltenberg in the information space associated with the upcoming July NATO summit in Warsaw. But in General bellicose and anti-Russian rhetoric, NATO will only increase. And the feeling that limit this. Trying to create the world public opinion the need for aggression.”
In fact, it is extremely dangerous. In the Western world before to do something, making loud political statements. After realizing that public opinion supports a certain actions or simply not opposed to, the phase of implementation.
A statement about cyber attacks means that you do not even have to be shaking a vial of white powder. They say there was a cyber attack, and we begin fighting. What was the attack who held it, whether it was at all, nobody will know. That is, NATO wants to act on the principle “you are guilty that I want to eat”.
However, we will add, the Alliance has no strategy for collective resistance to cyber threats and the more there is the strategy of “asymmetric” response to the cyber threat — that is, direct military means. It is absolutely not clear, what means: tanks, missiles or bombs. It is not clear, and someone to iron tanks or bomb, because the enemy is invisible. To prove that somewhere was visited by Russian, Chinese or someone else, is not so easy. Often not impossible.
And we do not believe that the NATO Secretary General is convinced of the need to bomb Moscow just because of suspicions: uh-uh, I think that’s “aggressive” Russian made hacking attacks against some steel mills in Germany or went through “medical records” in Estonia, and therefore let’s let a couple of rockets at them or went to them bombers. Apparently, Stoltenberg just makes a loud statement before the upcoming Warsaw summit of NATO, by promoting the event and “preaching” the sanctity of the Alliance. But such statements hardly what it require are the words, not approved and adopted document.
Surveyed and commented Oleg Chuvakin
