Cyberwarfare by Russia includes denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, persecution of cyber-dissidents and other active measures. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, some of these activities have been coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which is part of the FSB and was formerly a part of the 16th KGB department, but others have been directed by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Military of Russia.
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Online presence
US journalist Pete Earley described his interviews with former senior Russian intelligence officer Sergei Tretyakov, who defected in the United States in 2000:
Sergei would send an officer to a branch of New York Public Library where he could get access to the Internet without anyone knowing his identity. The officer would post the propaganda on various websites and send it in emails to US publications and broadcasters. Some propaganda would be disguised as educational or scientific reports. ... The studies had been generated at the Center by Russian experts. The reports would be 100% accurate
Tretyakov did not specify the targeted web sites, but made clear they selected the sites which are most convenient for distributing the specific disinformation. During his work in New York City in the end of the 1990s, one of the most frequent disinformation subjects was War in Chechnya.
According to a publication in Russian computer weekly Computerra, "just because it became known that anonymous editors are editing articles in English Wikipedia in the interests of UK and US intelligence and security services, it is also likely that Russian security services are involved in editing Russian Wikipedia, but this is not even interesting to prove it — because everyone knows that security bodies have a special place in structure of our [Russian] state"
Cyberattacks
It has been claimed that Russian security services organized a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their cyber-warfare against other countries, most notably the 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and the 2008 cyberattacks on Russia, South Ossetia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. One identified young Russian hacker said that he was paid by Russian state security services to lead hacking attacks on NATO computers. He was studying computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid for by the FSB.
Estonia
Speaking about the 2007 cyberattacks, Estonia's defence minister Jaak Aaviksoo said he did not possess evidence of official Russian government involvement in cyberattacks.
Georgia
Concerning the 2008 cyberattacks on Georgia, an independent US-based research institute US Cyber Consequences Unit report stated the attacks had "little or no direct involvement from the Russian government or military". According to the institute's conclusions, some several attacks originated from the PCs of multiple users located in Russia, Ukraine and Latvia. These users were willingly participating in cyberwarfare, being supporters of Russia during the 2008 South Ossetia war, while some other attacks also used botnets.
Germany
In 2015 a high-ranking security official stated that it was "highly plausible" that a cybertheft of files from the German Parliamentary Committee investigating the NSA spying scandal later published by Wikileaks was conducted by Russian hackers. In late 2016 Bruno Kahl, president of the Bundesnachrichtedienst warned of data breaches and misinformation-campaigns steered by Russia. According to him there are insights that cyberattacks occur with no other purpose than political uncertainty. Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the country's Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, notes "growing evidence of attempts to influence the [next] federal election" in September 2017 and "increasingly aggressive cyber espionage" against political entities in Germany.
Russia (domestic)
According to Soldatov, a hacker attack on his web site Agentura was apparently directed by the secret services in the middle of the Moscow theater hostage crisis.
Ukraine
In March 2014, a Russian cyber weapon called Snake or "Ouroboros" is reported to have created havoc on Ukrainian government systems.
According to CrowdStrike from 2014 to 2016, the Russian APT Fancy Bear used Android malware to target the Ukrainian Army's Rocket Forces and Artillery. They distributed an infected version of an Android app whose original purpose was to control targeting data for the D-30 Howitzer artillery. The app, used by Ukrainian officers, was loaded with the X-Agent spyware and posted online on military forums. CrowdStrike claims the attack was successful, with more than 80% of Ukrainian D-30 Howitzers destroyed, the highest percentage loss of any artillery pieces in the army (a percentage that had never been previously reported and would mean the loss of nearly the entire arsenal of the biggest artillery piece of the Ukrainian Armed Forces). According to the Ukrainian army this number is incorrect and that losses in artillery weapons "were way below those reported" and that that these losses "have nothing to do with the stated cause".
The U.S. government concluded after a study that a cyber attack caused a power outage in Ukraine which left more than 200,000 people temporarily without power. The Russian hacking group Sandworm or the Russian government were possibly behind the malware attack on the Ukrainian power grid as well as a mining company and a large railway operator in December 2015.
United States
In April 2015, CNN reported that "russian hackers" had "penetrated sensitive parts of the White House" computers in "recent months." It was said that the FBI, the Secret Service, and other U.S. intelligence agencies categorized the attacks "among the most sophisticated attacks ever launched against U.S. government systems."
In 2015, CNN reported that Russian hackers, likely working for the Russian government, are suspected in the State Department hack. Federal law enforcement, intelligence and congressional officials briefed on the investigation say the hack of the State email system is the "worst ever" cyberattack intrusion against a federal agency.
In 2016, the release of emails from Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton through the DC Leaks website were said by private sector analyst's and US intelligence services to have been of Russian origin. Also, in December of 2016, Republican and Democratic Senators on the United States Armed Services Committee called for "a special select committee to investigate Russian attempts to influence the presidential election."
On December 30, 2016 Burlington Electric Department, a Vermont Utility company, announced that a code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe had been found in their computers. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warned executives of the financial, utility and transportation industries about the malware code. Later on, the Washington Post put the following disclaimer at the top of its report: "An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far."
In popular culture
The alleged FSB activities on the Internet have been described in the short story "Anastasya" by Russian writer Grigory Svirsky, who was interested in the moral aspects of their work. He wrote:
"It seems that offending, betraying, or even "murdering" people in the virtual space is easy. This is like killing an enemy in a video game: one does not see a disfigured body or the eyes of the person who is dying right in front of you. However, the human soul lives by its own basic laws that force it to pay the price for the virtual crime in his real life".