WSJ: Russia Has Well Developed 'Doctrine' for CyberAttacks, Warfare

A blueprint for the Russian military's use of cyberwarfare, written back in 2013 by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, is likely to come under new scrutiny after President Barack Obama issued new U.S. sanctions this week.

On Friday, news broke that Russian hacking code was found in a computer belonging to a Vermont utility.

In his professional journal article, Gerasimov, who heads Russia's General Staff, wrote that cyberspace "opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy," The Wall Street Journal reports.

Gerasimov's article came out following the Arab Spring, during which protests spread through the use of social media, and he said it was important that Russia perfect its cyber activities, including to defend itself from attacks.

The Obama administration, while issuing its sanctions, accused Russia's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, along with the country's Federal Security Service of using hacking and other activities to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

According to experts, Russia has increased its use of cyberattacks against neighboring countries in the years after the article, in a ploy now referred to as the "Gerasimov Doctrine, and Ukraine has been targeted by most of Russia's activities.

“Ukraine is the perfect sandpit for this as it is complex enough to test it out but it’s not NATO and can’t really fight back,” Mark Galeotti, senior researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague, told The Wall Street Journal.

Several Russian companies are also likely involved in waging cyber attacks, but Karen Kazaryan, chief analyst at the Russian Association for Electronic Communications, said the connections between the businesses and the Russian government and military are hard to prove

"For the second day in a row we’ve been trying to understand what these companies are," Kazaryan commented. "Nobody knows anything about them. There’s a closed community of engineers, state servants and security experts, including cybersecurity experts on social media and no one has been able to find any heads or tails looking into them."

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