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1/01/2017 6:29 am  #1


How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

MOSCOW — Aleksandr B. Vyarya thought his job was to defend people from cyberattacks until, he says, his government approached him with a request to do the opposite.

Mr. Vyarya, 33, a bearded, bespectacled computer programmer who thwarted hackers, said he was suddenly being asked to join a sweeping overhaul of the Russian military last year. Under a new doctrine, the nation’s generals were redefining war as more than a contest of steel and gunpowder, making cyberwarfare a central tenet in expanding the Kremlin’s interests.

“Sorry, I can’t,” Mr. Vyarya said he told an executive at a Russian military contracting firm who had offered him the hacking job. But Mr. Vyarya was worried about the consequences of his refusal, so he abruptly fled to Finland last year, he and his former employer said. It was a rare example of a Russian who sought asylum in the face of the country’s push to recruit hackers.

“This is against my principles — and illegal,” he said of the Russian military’s hacking effort.

While much about Russia’s cyberwarfare program is shrouded in secrecy, details of the government’s effort to recruit programmers in recent years — whether professionals like Mr. Vyarya, college students, or even criminals — are shedding some light on the Kremlin’s plan to create elite teams of computer hackers.

American intelligence agencies say that a team of Russian hackers stole data from the Democratic National Committee during the presidential campaign. On Thursday, the Obama administration imposed sanctions against Russia for interfering in the election, the bedrock of the American political system.

The sanctions take aim at Russia’s main intelligence agencies and specific individuals, striking at one part of a sprawling cyberespionage operation that also includes the military, military contractors and teams of civilian recruits.

For more than three years, rather than rely on military officers working out of isolated bunkers, Russian government recruiters have scouted a wide range of programmers, placing prominent ads on social media sites, offering jobs to college students and professional coders, and even speaking openly about looking in Russia’s criminal underworld for potential talent.

Those recruits were intended to cycle through military contracting companies and newly formed units called science squadrons established on military bases around the country.

As early as 2013, Sergei K. Shoigu, the Russian defense minister, told university rectors at a meeting in Moscow that he was on a “head hunt in the positive meaning of the word” for coders.

The Defense Ministry bought advertising on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social network. One video shows a man clanging a military rifle on a table beside a laptop computer, then starting to type.

“If you graduated from college, if you are a technical specialist, if you are ready to use your knowledge, we give you an opportunity,” the ad intoned. Members of the science squadrons, the video said, live in “comfortable accommodation,” shown as an apartment furnished with a washing machine.

University students subject to mandatory conscription in the nation’s armed forces, but who wanted to avoid brutal stints as enlistees, could opt instead to join a science squadron. A government questionnaire asks draftees about their knowledge of programming languages.

The ministry posted openings on job forums, according to an investigation by Meduza, a Russian news site based in Riga, Latvia, that first disclosed the recruitment effort. One post from 2014 advertised for a computer scientist with knowledge of “patches, vulnerabilities and exploits,” which refers to sabotage used to alter a computer.

Given the size of Russia’s cybercrime underworld, it was not long before the military considered recruiting those it described as “hackers who have problems with the law.”

In an article titled “Enlisted Hacker” in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the government newspaper, a deputy minister of defense, Gen. Oleg Ostapenko, said the science squadrons might include hackers with criminal histories. “From the point of view of using scientific potential, this is a matter for discussion,” he was quoted as saying in 2013.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/europe/how-russia-recruited-elite-hackers-for-its-cyberwar.html?hpw&rref=technology&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

1/01/2017 8:32 am  #2


Re: How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

And, yet there are some who poo-poo the idea that cyber attacks aren't a problem, so "let's move on."  Chumps.

 

1/01/2017 8:45 am  #3


Re: How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

Just Fred wrote:

And, yet there are some who poo-poo the idea that cyber attacks aren't a problem, so "let's move on."  Chumps.

Yea, our resident Russian Hacking denier's behavior reminds of his climate change denying behavior.
The more evidence that comes out, the more fervently he offers mocking and derision, labeling people as "hysterical",  "Delusional", and so on.

Ridicule is NOT a  reasoned counter-argument.
Refusing to look at something because you'd rather not see it is NOT wisdom.
It is folly.

Last edited by Goose (1/01/2017 9:09 am)


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
     Thread Starter
 

1/01/2017 10:43 am  #4


Re: How Russia Recruited Elite Hackers for Its Cyberwar

Tsk, tsk to all of you.  You know Donald is coming out this week with his explanation of the secret he knows about hacking so there's no need to question others about this.

 

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