The Russia watchRussia 'live testing' cyberattacks; cyber deterrence; Russia's newest U.S. propaganda effort, and more

Russia appears to be ‘live testing’ cyberattacks – former U.K. spy boss Robert Hannigan (John Leyden, Register)
Former GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan has warned that the emergence of a commodity marketplace for hacking has changed and escalated the threat.Hannigan made the comments during a keynote speech Weaponizing the web: Nation-state hacking and what it means for enterprise cybersecurity at the Infosec conference in London yesterday morning. During a wide-ranging presentation, the former cyber spy boss said that the problem posed by nation state attackers had increased over the last five years and become an issue for enterprises as well as governments. “Nation state attacks using criminal group as a proxy” is a “fairly new issue” and one of the issues along with the commoditization of hacking tools that makes international geo-politics a feature of corporate security.Russia presents a greater threat in terms of sophistication and a greater overall danger – not least because it doesn’t mind being destructive, Hannigan warned. The destructive element of attacks blamed on Russia includes NotPetya and attacks on the Ukrainian power grid.Attacks attributed back to Russia have become more sophisticated, brazen and even a little bit reckless. Russia appears to be live-testing cyberattacks – as has been speculated about the recent planting of the VPNFilter backdoor on routers – although the intent is unknown. “It’s unclear if that was a mistake or an experiment,” Hannigan said. “Russia seems to be live testing things in cyber, as it has been [on the ground] in Syria, but it’s a doctrine we don’t fully understand.” Asked at the start of an audience Q+A whether the UK was at cyberwar with Russia, Hannigan replied that it probably was. “It certainly feels like we are in a state of conflict,” he mused.

There is now a well-documented example of cyber deterrence(Jason Healey, Defense One)
Unfortunately for the United States, it was executed by Russia.

Russian troll or clumsy publicity hound? (Amy MacKinnon, Foreign Policy)
A Russian media executive says he’s come to Washington to test the limits of American freedom.

This man is running Russia’s newest propaganda effort in the U.S.— or at least he’s trying to(Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny, NBC News)
Alexander Malkevich tried to throw a rally at the White House, but nobody showed up.