Russian cyberattacks are becoming more widespread. The purpose of these assaults is always to benefit or harm a nation politically or economically. Such attacks serve a political purpose by promoting a particular contender. Four Russian nationals, including two Russian officers, were charged by the Department of Justice in March 2017 with breaking into Yahoo's computer networks. At least 500 million Yahoo accounts were targeted in the cyberattacks by Russian intelligence. The contents of statements made by Yahoo, Google, and other webmail providers, including stories from Russian journalists, the United States, and other countries, were then accessed without authorization using the stolen data, Russian government officials and company savings among others Russia contributed to the highest cyber-interference interference in the 2016 U.S elections. There are four primary ways in which Russia interfered with the U. S elections; through stealing of information, selectively circulating information, using false information and hacking voting systems across within the United States.
Introduction
For the past ten years, Russia has been known to cyber hack other nations (Windrem, 2016). As individuals, businesses and government entities continue to utilize the benefits of the internet, they keep on exposing their security resistance of information technologies that determined threat actors seek to influence for political or monetary gains. Russia has a long time history of the cyber attack against other nations, e.g., Estonia (2007), Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014-15) (Windrem, 2016). In 2009, the Wall Street Journal reported that cyber spies from both Russia and China had interfered with the U.S electrical network trying to find the path and control their systems (Gorman, 2009). Russian efforts persisted in 2016-17, with attempts to interfere with the U.S elections and information operations targeting numerous countries in eastern and Western Europe. In February 2017, Russia's Defense Minister recognized that the state had formed a new military branch known as "information warfare troops." In March 2017, the Northern District of California reported that four defendants, including two officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), hacked computers at the beginning of January 2014 to get right of entry to about 500 million Yahoo's network and contents of webmail accounts.
Russia's Cyber Attacks in the U.S
Russians efforts to do violence and to challenge the American democracy did not start or end with the 2016 election. Russia’s measureless and a cyber capability continues to target the United States government, its citizens and also America’s democratic allies worldwide. (Summers & Walstrom, 2017). Despite Russia's apparent attack on the American democracy during the 2016 election, President Donald Trump and secretary of State Rex Tillerson have continued with their policy of appeasement. Instead of President Trump and Secretary of State Tillerson of taking a step of protecting America and act upon Russian efforts, they sought after establishing alliance plans with Russia. President Donald Trump recommended that they create a ‘cyber security unit' with Russia.
Russian Criminals Charged by the U.S for hacking Yahoo and Email Accounts
In March 2017, the Department of Justice charged four Russian nationals, including two Russian officers, were charged with hacking into Yahoo's systems. The Russian intelligence cybercriminals wanted to steal information from at least 500 million Yahoo accounts. Then use the stolen data to get unauthorized access to the contents of reports of Yahoo, Google and other webmail providers including accounts of Russian journalists, United States, Russian government officials and company savings among others (Department of Justice, 2017). According to the allegations of the indictment, the FSB officer defendants, Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin protected, directed, facilitated and financed the criminal hackers to gather information all the way through computer intrusions in the United States and all over. In the case that was read against them, the defendants worked with their co-defendants Alexsey Belan and Karim Baratov to get authorized access to the email account of the accounts of individuals (Department of Justice, 2017). Back in September 2012, Belan had been charged, and in June 2013, he was listed as one of the FBI's Cyber most wanted criminals in November 2013. Belan was therefore arrested in European country through a request from the American government, but intelligent Belan ran way to Russia before he could be charged.
According to the U.S Department of Justice (2017), the FSB officers did not act on the United State government’s Red Notice of detaining Belan. But instead used him to get an authorized access to Yahoo’s Management Tool (AMT) which had the information on how Yahoo created and logged changes to the accounts of users. The FSB officers contributed to Belan’s other criminal activities by giving him sensitive FSB intelligence information that assisted him to get rid of detention by the U.S government and other law enforcement and agencies within and without Russia which comprised of details concerning FSB investigations of computer hacking and the techniques that are employed by FSB for finding out criminal hackers. Additionally, Belan also got access to steal sensitive financial information such as gift credit card numbers from webmail accounts where he gained access to more than 30 million accounts.
Russian cyber gangs –The Shadow Brokers
A cyber group with the connection to Russia was held responsible for the strange worldwide computer security violation revenging for United States raid on Syria. The Shadow Brokers organization stated that on April it stole a cyber weapon from the American spying agency that gives unparallel access to all computers that use Microsoft Windows, the most famous computer operating system (Schneier, 2017).The hacking tool is said to have been build up by the National Security Agency (NSA), which America's most influential intelligence unit. The NSA is specially made to get access to computers that terrorists and hackers use. In 2013, the Shadow Brokers stole a few disks full of National Security Agency deep secrets. This mysterious group of hackers has been putting these vital secrets on the internet whereby embarrassing the NSA and destroying its unique capabilities. By so doing, the Shadow Brokers have been damaging and revealing significant susceptibilities in Cisco routers, Microsoft Windows and Linux mail servers ruining the names of these companies and making their customers to lack trust in them. The Shadow Brokers also granted the authors of the WannaCry the permission to exploit and contaminate hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide. The Shadow Brokers continued with their hacking behavior, and they even threatened to make public more NSA secrets every month which would give cybercriminals and other enemy states worldwide more hacking tools (Schneier, 2017). This mysterious group, the Shadow Brokers has so far printed four sets of NSA material. Criminals worldwide use the hacking tools for their private, selfish gains. Countries like Israel and France are capable of access to this kind of information, but they can never publish it because they may not want to bring upon themselves the wrath of the United States.
On the other hand, countries like North Korea and Iran can access the information. China and Russia are leading in hacking even though China is trying to work with America. It was believed that when the first document was out on August, Russians were related to that link that was to sound as a warning to President Barrack Obama not to revenge for the Democratic National Committee hacks. Russia used their understanding to become aware of the NSA hacking in their own country as well as to attack other countries around the world (Perlroth & Sanger, 2017).The Shadow Brokers did not care whether the American knew of their trick or not, but they confidently used the stolen tools publicly. Interestingly, no person concerned with such hackings was arrested in public. The Shadow Brokers were not over with their hackings despite the many damages they caused. They came up with a cruel message where they announced a ‘Data Dump of the Month' service. This service was meant to threaten in publishing the tools and exploit the web browsers, networking apparatus, smartphones and Microsoft Windows.
Russian involvement in U.S presidential election
There have been allegations that Russia interfered with the 2016 U.S presidential elections. The evidence that the FBI and the National Security Agency (NSA) gave in January 2017 is that President Putin of Russia contributed to the efforts of hacking the elections. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official said that a group of people that were linked to Kremlin attempted to interfere with the polls in the U.S (Tillette, 2017). It was also reported that Russia influenced the campaign through social media forums. Russian agents hacked computer systems that are closely associated with all the major U. S political parties. This activity succeeded due to the fact they had already stolen thousands of emails from the dominant Democratic Party figures in earlier 2016 ahead of the elections. Despite the efforts employed by the hackers to interfere with the campaign, there are no adverse effects reported as far as the election results are concerned.
The efforts that Russia used to hinder the U.S elections were more extensive than what was previously believed. It was revealed that voter files and software systems were interfered with in double compared to the previous. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) disclosed that the Russian hackers hit policies of 21 states (Tillette, 2017).When President Obama was still in power, he used the modern- day ‘red phone' to tackle Moscow concerning its attack on October. As the National Security Agency (NSA) explained, Russians wanted to pose an e-voting retailer and deceive the local government staff to open Microsoft Word files. Russia continues to train and recruit powerful spies and agent in the United States. Russia has identified the United States as their first spying priority. The United States is still not blind to them being the target. The CIA identifies Russia as the primary suspect in cyber hacking in the United States (Entous, Nakashima, & Miller, 2017).
In May 2017, former director of CIA said that the continued abuse of the U. S diplomats could not be tolerated. As it was reported by the Washington Post in 2016, the Russian intelligence and defense services were waging the campaign of distressing and intimidating the U.S diplomats, embassy employees and their families in Moscow as well as across Europe. The Russian suspects went to the extent of assassinating their enemies in the United States where strange deaths were reported in the 2016 elections. Russia's attempt to intervene in the American politics did not come to an end after the 2016 election.
Conclusion
Russia’s assault on the American democracy and its hard work to destabilize the United States and all its partners has not stopped. It is risky for the security of the United States for President Donald Trump’s government to continue calming down the Russian government. The United States should be precautions before getting into an alliance with Russia. As Russia continues to be United State’s enemy, the U. S government should change the strategies it uses to tackle Russia. It is advisable that President Donald Trump’s administration and the lawmakers takes an immediate action to Russia’s destructive behavior and come up with strategic ways on how to protect the United States and its partners from future attacks.
References
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