An integral part of the administration is Russia’s Security Council, which provides strategic thinking in all areas of national security, including cyber it is also a government body tasked with maintaining contact with its Western counterparts, including a cyber “red line” between Moscow and Washington. The Presidential Administration: The direct successor to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the Presidential Administration supervises Russia’s intelligence and security services.
Cyber command was never launched despite several attempts in the early 2010s.
The military: The cyber capabilities in Russia’s military are run by two directorates within Russia’s General Staff: the GU (or the Main Intelligence Directorate and the 8th These two directorates run operations and supervise Russian cyber troops and the military research and development effort.The agency never went through any structural reforms, but its capabilities were significantly expanded in the 2010s, including in cyber. The SVR: The Foreign Intelligence Service (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki SVR) is Russia’s spy agency, a direct successor to the foreign intelligence branch of the KGB.In cyber, the FSB’s capabilities are divided between those the agency has been building since the late 1990s (the 18th Center, or Information Security Center) and the capabilities the FSB acquired in 2003 when it absorbed several departments of the Russian electronic intelligence (ELINT) agency, the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information, or FAPSI (the 16th Center of the FSB or the Center of Electronic Intelligence in Communications). The FSB: The Federal Security Service (Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti FSB) is a major domestic security and intelligence agency.This report is an attempt to map the Russian cyber landscape and to help understand the intricate web of cyber actors. The relationship among these actors has changed quite significantly in the past six years. It includes private entities, both legitimate and criminal, alongside traditional security services, the military, and the top political level where decisions are made. The list of Russian cyber actors is long and complicated. It, thus, comes as no surprise that over the years the command-and-control structure managing Russian cyber operations has developed into something very different. The political element has always been decisive in the Russian cyber playbook, much more so than in other parts of the Russian security state. While an answer to the mystery of Russian cyber successes and failures in and around Ukraine is beyond the scope of this report, the case is nonetheless instructive, underlining the importance of understanding how Russian cyber operations are governed.
In this, as in much else, the Kremlin greatly miscalculated. The Kremlin wanted the invasion to play out as a “special operation” (in the Kremlin’s words), not a conventional military offensive. Or it may be that Russia did not use its offensive cyber capabilities because the Kremlin interfered in every aspect of the preparation of the war, from military planning to cyber activities. It may be that Ukrainian cyberspace proved to be much better protected than some thought. Reality, however, has played out differently.Įxactly why cyber has not been a consequential front in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is unknown. Indeed, Russia has extensive and formidable cyber capabilities. Overview In the unsettling landscape of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, cyber remains one of the most enduring mysteries.Įven before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February, many experts in the West, in Ukraine, and in Russia believed Moscow would use cyberattacks to inflict major damage on Ukraine prior to or after the start of the military offensive.
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