Back in 2019, longtime Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov asked a rhetorical question about Russia’s cyber posture in a widely circulated article in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta: “Who are we on the world wide web – spiders or flies?”
The answer, of course, is spiders – plural. Russia’s offensive cyber ecosystem consists of a lot of different kinds of spiders hunting a lot of different types of flies.
From the military and security services to state-recruited cyber criminals, to so-called patriotic hackers, the ecosystem of Russia’s offensive cyber capacity is vast, complex, and often devastatingly effective.
It has been deployed for everything from espionage to DDoS attacks to malware to ransomware, in the former Soviet space and in the West.
On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with Justin Sherman, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, the founder and CEO of Global Cyber Strategies, and an incoming adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Justin is also the author of the just-released report “Confronting Russia’s Cyber Power,” which is part of the Atlantic Council Eurasia Center’s Russia Tomorrow series.
Enjoy…
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SHOW NOTES
Justin Sherman’s report, “Confronting Russia’s Cyber Power, can be accessed here. The Atlantic Council Eurasia Center’s series, Russia Tomorrow: Navigating a New Paradigm, can be accessed here. Justin Sherman’s other published works can be accessed here and here.
The Power Vertical Newsletter on Substack can be accessed here. Recently published work by Brian Whitmore can be accessed here, here, and here. Please follow Brian Whitmore and The Power Vertical on Bluesky@powervertical.bsky.social