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Cyber Policy Essay

Decent Essays

Russian Cyber Policy Efficiency In 2007, the government of Estonia decided to move a landmark, the Bronze Soldier, from the center of the city of Tallinn to a military cemetery. This caused outrage in the ethnic Russian community living in Estonia. It is believed that Russia distributed false news reports about the desecration of Soviet war graves and the Bronze Soldier. These false reports more than likely assisted with inciting the riot that occurred on April 26, 2007 and lasted approximately two nights. McGuinness (2017) of BBC News reports: From 27 April, Estonia was also hit by major cyber-attacks which in some cases lasted weeks. Online services of Estonian banks, media outlets and government bodies were taken down by unprecedented …show more content…

This means that the cyber-attacks and the military operations that occur before, after, or during the cyber-attack must have been authorized and coordinated together by the same entity that sanctioned the military action. In order for the Russian government to benefit from the effects of the cyber operations without incurring repercussions, they must be able to maintain plausible deniability. If a party wants specific actions performed at specific times it may have to provide instructions and potentially the tools to perform those actions. Just as a computer may use a proxy to access a website so that the website will not know the identifying information of the computer requesting the information, the Russians may have used a proxy, a group of non-state cyber actors, to perform the cyber-attacks. While the group of non-state cyber actors may not agree with the government’s national objectives, they may have been incentivized with funds and/or favors. In any event, the cyber actors directly and indirectly assist the Russian government with realizing the national objectives, depending on if the government informed them of the true objectives. It is safe to assume that the relationship between the government and non-state cyber-actors is potentially mutually beneficial or that the government threatens the non-state cyber-actor in order to make them perform some cyber action. For state cyber-actors, the relationship is mutually beneficial because the Russian

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