* Russian-sponsored gathering rallies support for UN treaty
* U.S. opposes attempts to restrict use of web
* Russia says cyber attacks are new level of confrontation
By Adrian Croft
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany, April 25 (Reuters) – Russia
has stepped up its campaign for a globally binding treaty on
cyber security, warning that many states are acquiring cyber
warfare capabilities that, if unleashed, could subvert economies
and bring down critical infrastructure.
Hosting a gathering of experts in the German Alps to try to
rally support for its controversial proposals for a U.N.
convention to crack down on Internet crime and terrorism, Russia
said 120 countries now conducted online war games to try to
understand the Internet’s military potential.
“We won’t use nuclear weapons – it is a Doomsday weapon. But
when we have a situation where we have millions of hacker
attacks on our money, on our private computers, it means that it
is a new form, a new level of confrontation,” said Andrey
Krutskikh, Russia’s recently appointed special coordinator on
information technology in its foreign ministry.
Russia has been hosting such meetings in Germany – which it
likes to call the cyber equivalent of Davos – for the past six
years. This year it is trying to drum up support for a treaty
that would classify “information warfare” as a crime against
international peace and security.
Under Moscow’s proposals – which are being resisted by a
number of Western countries who regard them as an attack on free
speech – governments would aim to “maintain a balance between
fundamental human rights and the effective counteraction of
terrorist use of the information space”.
The Russian proposals have made little headway, however, due
to a philosophical gulf between Western nations and more
authoritarian countries over whether it is possible or desirable
to curb the open culture of the Internet.
There was no breakthrough at this week’s meeting in Germany
either, but Krutskikh, who is leading Moscow’s campaign, said
agreeing such a treaty should be “a top priority.”
The Stuxnet computer worm that affected Iranian nuclear
facilities in 2009-10 had done “enormous damage”, he added, and
a wide range of critical infrastructure around the world could
be a target for cyber attack too.
“It could be a metallurgical plant – there are countries
quite dependent on one plant and if this plant is put out of
order the economy and the society of that country could
collapse. It could be banking systems … (or) private phones,”
he told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting in the
picturesque German mountain resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
Krutskikh said hacking attacks on Russian sites were in the
“hundreds of thousands, if not millions, every day … It is a
test of vulnerabilities which is a dramatically serious matter”.
WESTERN SCEPTICISM
Highly-publicised episodes, from the blocking of U.S. and
British government websites by activist hacker groups Anonymous
and LulzSec to this week’s suspected cyber attack on Iran’s main
oil export terminal, have shown the vulnerabilities of the
Internet.
In November, a U.S. intelligence report to Congress warned
that China and Russia are using cyber espionage to steal U.S.
technology secrets to bolster their own economic development and
that poses a threat to U.S. prosperity and security.
“We cannot deny that attacks come from (the geographical
territory of) Russia, but they come from the UK, they come from
everywhere,” Krutskikh said.
Asked who was responsible for the attacks on Russian
computer systems, he said he believed states experimented with
such probing, but “mostly it could be hooligans”.
Western experts at the meeting said Moscow’s proposals, put
forward last September, were vague, risked undermining free
speech and stood little chance of being widely adopted.
Karl Rauscher, chief technology officer of the EastWest
Institute, a security thinktank, told the meeting that the
proposed treaty’s call for states to “refrain from slander as
well as from using insulting or hostile propaganda to …
interfere in the internal affairs of other states” clashed with
U.S. first amendment rights to free speech.
He said the vast quantity of information being put on the
internet made it impossible to censor.
Other experts who spoke at the meeting said there was no
international agreement on the definition of terms such as
“terrorist”, used in the treaty.
Russia’s proposals have already been rejected by the United
States and Britain, which says attempts to restrict the free
flow of information are doomed to fail. No U.S. officials took
part in the forum.
Krutskikh said Russia was not discouraged by opposition to
its ideas, however, and would try to make progress in other
discussion fora, such as a United Nations expert group on
information security that is set to meet later this year.
(Editing by Andrew Osborn)
