5 May 2022

Cyberwar Is a Two-Way Street for Russia

Robert K. Ackerman

Russia’s well-known cyber attacks on Western nations could be setting the country up for a powerful backlash, offers a retired U.S. Army expert formerly based in Moscow. After years of relentless penetrations and attacks on databases and infrastructure in U.S. and NATO countries, Russia now is finding itself as much—if not more—of a target of reciprocal cyber assault capabilities increasingly wielded by the West.

Two factors are at play in this scenario. First, western countries such as the United States have built up offensive cyber weapons and tactics to use as they choose. Second, Russia has focused for so long on using its own offensive cyber capabilities that it has not given as much consideration to the defensive side of cyber operations, not realizing the countries they might attack digitally have been developing their own capabilities to use on an increasingly vulnerable Russian cyberspace.

No comments: