What Crimea telecom link could mean for Russia-Ukraine ... · What Crimea telecom link could mean...
Transcript of What Crimea telecom link could mean for Russia-Ukraine ... · What Crimea telecom link could mean...
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What Crimea telecom link could meanfor Russia-Ukraine cyber-conflictPlans for a fiber-optic cable between Russia and Crimea are 'at an advanced stage,'and could change the balance of cyber-power by providing Russia with moreoffensive options, experts say.
By Mark Clayton, Staff writer APRIL 7, 2014
Russia (/tags/topic/Russia)’s promise to start providing Internet and telecom
infrastructure to Crimea (/tags/topic/Crimea) via Rostelecom, the semiprivatized
state telecom of Russia, hasn’t been fulfilled – yet. But if and when such a linkup
happens, the ongoing titfortat cyberconflict between Russia and Ukraine
(/tags/topic/Ukraine) could quickly change in unpredictable ways, mostly to
Russia's benefit, cybersecurity experts monitoring the fluid situation say.
Plans to deploy a fiberoptic submarine telecom link between Russia’s mainland
and Crimea are “at an advanced stage, and the cable could be in operation as early
as this month,” TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research firm
reported Friday, citing Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
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That announcement closely followed Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s
call late last month for Rostelecom to start offering telecom and Internet services
in the newly annexed Crimean Peninsula as a way of safeguarding communications
channels.
Recommended: How much do you know about Ukraine? Take our quiz!(/World/2013/1202/HowmuchdoyouknowaboutUkraineTakeourquiz/Population)
“We must have Rostelecom and its subsidiaries come to Crimea as soon as
possible,” Mr. Medvedev said at a Moscow meeting on Crimea’s future, according
to a March 25 government news release. “We cannot tolerate a situation in which
sensitive information and documents related to the administration of the two
constituent entities of the Russian Federation are relayed by foreign
telecommunications companies. This must be terminated.”
A submarine telecom cable could fit in sync with
Russian efforts to link Crimea into its energy
network as well. Russia is developing plans to build
an undersea gas pipeline to Crimea and could build
three power stations on the Black Sea peninsula
following annexation from Ukraine, Reuters
reported April 1.
Russia’s military forces are still reported to be
conducting exercises along its long border with
Ukraine, adding to diplomatic and regional
tensions. But up to this point, little has changed in
the cyberconnection realm between Ukraine and
Crimea.
Crimea’s Internet providers are still getting their
outside Internet services supplied via providers in
mainland Ukraine, which in turn gets most of their
bandwidth from fiber optic lines running to
Western countries, reports Renesys, a cyber
security firm in Manchester, N.H., that monitors
Internet pathways.
Russian Internet service providers (ISPs), by
contrast, have so far played a very minor role in
providing outside access for ISPs in Ukraine (or
Crimea for that matter), the company says. But that
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Day/2014/Photos-of-the-Day-10-01)An undersea link would allow the Russians to
provide Internet directly to Crimea without
traversing mainland Ukraine. While laying a new submarine cable is typically a
long process, Russian ISPs could in the meantime provide bandwidth temporarily
through existing landlines to Crimea – and that could happen fast, according to a
Renesys analysis.
Whatever link is established could change the balance of cyberpower, which so
far has seemed to be a stalemate, some experts say. If Crimean Internet service
providers then switch over to Russian providers, it would give Russia added
security for its communications with Crimea and additional offensive cyber
options, according to Doug Madory, a senior analyst with Renesys.
“Lets say Russia brings Crimea into their fold, into their network, well they
wouldn’t be nearly as worried about collateral damage to Crimea if they wanted to
conduct a cyber or other attack on Ukraine’s Internet infrastructure,” Mr. Madory
says. “Conversely, if Crimea was the target of DDoS attacks from Ukraine, if that
Internet traffic had to go through Russia to get to Crimea, the Russian provider
could take it upon itself to protect Crimea.”
So far, the RussiaUkraine cyberconflict over Crimea has seen each nation’s
powerful criminal hacker communities apparently parrying and thrusting at each
other with distributed denial of service (DDoS) and other types of attacks,
although other entities, including hacktivists, are also reported to be active.
Prior to the RussianUkrainian confrontation that emerged late last year, criminal
hacker communities in the two countries were often in collaboration with each
other via organized cybergangs. Up to that point, they had appeared to refrain
from attacking each other’s countries, according to Jason Healey, director of the
Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, a national security think tank.
The Ukraine cyber fight has been different than Russia's past cyber conflicts.
Kremlin in 2007 sparked a weekslong cyberassault on Estonia by “ignoring or
encouraging” attacks by nationalist groups, Mr. Healey notes. A year later, in
attacks on Georgia, Putin allowed his security services to coordinate and possibly
even direct attacks on Georgian government and banking websites.
“In Ukraine, the Russians have used a more traditional path of propaganda,
misinformation, physical destruction, and modification of telecommunications
equipment, and cyberattacks, all integrated into a single campaign,” Mr. Healey
wrote in a recent online analysis.
Results so far in the RussiaUkraine conflict have seen hundreds of DDoS attacks
and presumably included clandestine cyberattacks that disrupted email systems
and websites at Russia’s central bank and foreign ministry, Ukraine’s Parliament,
and other government sites on both sides.
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On the day of the disputed vote over Crimean secession, Ukranian government
websites were hit by a wave of 42 cyberattacks during Crimea’s vote to secede
from Ukraine and join Russia. All of those were DDoS attacks, which clog
websites with bogus data, echoing DDoS attacks by Russia when it invaded the
former Soviet state of Georgia in 2008.
The day after the Crimean vote, however, saw a huge, apparently retaliatory,
counter wave of attacks against Russia, including 132 separate DDoS blasts
slamming Russian websites. One 18minute DDoS attack that hit Russia March 17
was 148 times more powerful than anything Russia did in Georgia in 2008, and
four times larger than a large attack emanating from Russia just days earlier,
according to Arbor Networks of Burlington, Mass., which tracks such attacks.
“Of course a submarine Internet link would help the Russians more firmly monitor
and secure communications in an out of Crimea – and it means the Crimeans will
be less dependent upon old Ukrainian infrastructure,” Healey says in an interview.
“When the Russian pathways come in, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the links with
Ukraine cut or rarely used. Crimea would then be dependent solely on Moscow’s
whims.”
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