Report on Russian Cyber Units
January 5, 2021 10:11 AM
The following is the Jan. 4, 2021 Congressional Research Service In Focus report, Russian Cyber Units.
From the report
Russia has deployed sophisticated cyber capabilities to conduct disinformation, propaganda, espionage, and destructive cyberattacks globally. To conduct these operations, Russia maintains numerous units overseen by its various security and intelligence agencies. Russia’s security agencies compete with each other and often conduct similar operations on the same targets, making specific attribution and motivation assessments difficult. Congress may be interested in the various Russian agencies, units, and their attributes to better understand why and how Russia conducts cyber operations.
Early Russian Cyber Operations
According to media and government reports, Russia’s initial cyber operations primarily consisted of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks and often relied on the co-optation or recruitment of criminal and civilian hackers. In 2007, Estonia was the target of a large-scale cyberattack, which most observers blamed on Russia. Estonian targets ranged from online banking and media outlets to government websites and email services.
https://news.usni.org/2021/01/05/report-on-russian-cyber-units#more-82521
