Андрей Солдатов: The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

Mika Velikovsky, interview with authors, January 2017.

Luke Harding, “Sergei Roldugin, the Cellist who Holds the Key to Tracing Putin’s Hidden Fortune,” Guardian , April 3, 2016, www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/sergei-roldugin-the-cellist-who-holds-the-key-to-tracing-putins-hidden-fortune.

Luke Harding, “Kremlin Dismisses Revelations in Panama Papers as ‘Putinphobia,’” Guardian , April 4, 2016, www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/kremlin-reaction-putin-dmitry-peskov-panama-papers-putinphobia.

The website of the Russian Ministry of Justice, the list of unwanted organizations, http://minjust.ru/ru/activity/nko/unwanted.

Mika Velikovsky, interview with the authors.

“Truth and Justice Regional and Local Forum, President of Russia, April 7, 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51685.

The video of the talk is available on the website of the International Journalism Festival, www.festivaldelgiornalismo.com/programme/2016/from-wikileaks-to-snowden-protecting-high-value-sources-in-the-age-of-mass-surveillance.

Drew Sullivan, “Journalism or Propaganda: Let’s Help Russian Media the Right Way,” GIJN, August 19, 2015, http://gijn.org/2015/08/19/journalismor-propaganda-lets-help-russian-media-the-right-way.

The other two participants were Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko and Minister of the Interior Vladimir Kolokoltsev. See “Meeting with Permanent Members of the Security Council,” President of Russia, April 8, 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51688.

“Direct Line with Vladimir Putin,” President of Russia, April 14, 2016, http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51716.

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, “How Hackers Broke into John Podesta and Colin Powell’s Gmail Accounts,” Motherboard , October 20, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-hackers-broke-into-john-podesta-and-colin-powells-gmail-accounts.

Dan Merica, “WikiLeaks Releases Transcripts of Clinton Goldman Sachs Speeches,” CNN, October 17, 2016, http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/15/politics/wikileaks-hillary-clinton-goldman-sachs-speeches; and David Dayen, “Behind Closed Doors, Hillary Clinton Sympathized with Goldman Sachs over Financial Reform,” Intercept , October 11, 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/behind-closed-doors-hillary-clinton-sympathized-with-goldman-sachs-over-financial-reform.

Ellen Nakashima, “Russian Government Hackers Penetrated DNC, Stole Opposition Research on Trump,” Washington Post , June 14, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-government-hackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-opposition-research-on-trump/2016/06/14/cf006cb4–316e-11e6–8ff7–7b6c1998b7a0_story.html.

Vladimir Soldatkin, “Moscow Denies Russian Involvement in U.S. DNC hacking,” Reuters , June 14, 2016, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-hack-russia-idUSKCN0Z02EK.

Dmitri Alperovitch, “Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee,” CrowdStrike Blog , June 15, 2016, www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee.

In 2010 Alperovitch led the investigation into Operation Aurora, the Chinese penetration into Google and a dozen other companies, and in 2012 he investigated the Night Dragon Chinese espionage operation of the Western multinational oil and gas companies. See Dmitri Alperovitz, MIT Technology Review, www.technologyreview.com/lists/innovators-under-35/2013/entrepreneur/dmitri-alperovitch.

An excellent example of this kind of government-private cooperation could be found in Daniil Turovsky, “Gruzit po polnoy programme: Zachem goskorporatsii ponadobilas Sistema dlya organizatsii DDoS-atak” [To download: for what the state corporation needs a system of DDoS-attacks], Meduza , September 3, 2015, https://meduza.io/feature/2015/09/03/gruzit-po-polnoy-programme.

20Alexey Navalny, “Russian ‘Hacker Hell’ Sentenced to 400 Hours Community Service in Germany,” Meduza , August 6, 2015, https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/08/06/russian-hacker-hell-sentenced-to-400-hours-community-service-in-germany. See also Aleksander Gorbachev, “Meet the Hacker who Terrorized the Russian Blogosphere,” Newsweek , July 9, 2015, http://www.newsweek.com/2015/07/17/gospel-according-hell-351544.html.

“Kiberberkut vskryl perepisky evromaidanovtsev s amerikanskimi sponsorami” [CyberBerkut broke into the correspondence of Euromaidan activists with the American sponsors], NTV, March 25, 2014, www.ntv.ru/novosti/869656. See also “09.04.2014 Strike Back!,” We Will Not Forget, https://cyber-berkut.org/en/olden/index5.php.

Michelle Martin and Erik Kirschbaum, “Pro-Russian Group Claims Cyber Attack on German Government Qebsites,” Reuters , January 7, 2015, www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-cyberattack-idUSKBN0KG15320150107.

Gordon Corera, “How France’s TV5 Was Almost Destroyed by ‘Russian Hackers,’” BBC, October 10, 2016, www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37590375.

“Guccifer 2.0 DNC’s Servers Hacked by a Lone Hacker,” Guccifer 2.0, June 15, 2016, https://guccifer2.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/dnc. See also Ellen Nakashima, “‘Guccifer 2.0’ Claims Credit for DNC Hack,” Washington Post , June 15, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/guccifer-20-claims-credit-for-dnc-hack/2016/06/15/abdcdf48–3366–11e6–8ff7–7b6c1998b7a0_story.html?utm_term=.c9440a5d9839.

Already in 2015 more and more people with expertise in digital forensics and threat intelligence got behind the theory that the technical analysis is sufficient for a proper attribution. The major shift happened around the investigation of the Sony hacking in November 2014, when the attack was attributed to North Korea.

The US intelligence community reports named the military intelligence, the GRU, and FSB as entities responsible for the attack, and the Obama administration finally sanctioned the GRU and the FSB. See The White House, “FACT SHEET: Actions in Response to Russian Malicious Cyber Activity and Harassment,” December 29, 2016, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/29/fact-sheet-actions-response-russian-malicious-cyber-activity-and.

Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani, “Hacked Emails Reveal NATO General Plotting Against Obama on Russia Policy,” Intercept , July 1, 2016, https://theintercept.com/2016/07/01/nato-general-emails.

Andrea Peterson, “WikiLeaks Posts Nearly 20,000 Hacked DNC Emails Online,” Washington Post , July 22, 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/07/22/wikileaks-posts-nearly-20000-hacked-dnc-emails-online/?utm_term=.ab5eada621e9. See also Joseph Cox, “Guccifer 2.0 Claims Responsibility for WikiLeaks DNC Email Dump,” Motherboard , July 22, 2016, https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/guccifer-2-claims-responsibility-for-dnc-email-dump.