Joseph Farrell ~ News And Views From The Nefarium – May 14 2015 [Video]

pactWhat Does China-Russia ‘No Hack’ Pact Mean For US?

Russia/China pact could be an Internet governance issue or a response to the U.S. DoD’s new cyber strategy, but one thing is certain: it doesn’t really mean China and Russia aren’t spying on one another anymore.

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Sara Kellerman Russia and China on Friday signed a pact agreeing not to hit one another with cyberattacks. Experts agree, however, that the countries don’t actually have any intention of ceasing their cyberespionage campaigns against each other. They say that the agreement instead is political posturing intended to send a message to the United States and its allies, though they differ slightly on what that message is, what motivated Russia and China to send it, and what it means for the U.S.

The nations also agreed to exchange technology, share information between their law enforcement agencies, and “jointly counteract technology that may ‘destabilize the internal political and socio-economic atmosphere,’ ‘disturb public order’ or ‘interfere with the internal affairs of the state,'” as the Wall Street Journal reports.

Tom Kellerman, chief cybersecurity officer of Trend Micro, says this is a natural progression of the economic and military relationship Russia and China have already had together since the Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established in 2001. He says this announcement could be happening now as a reaction to two things: the U.S-backed efforts to change Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to engage in combat overseas (which would naturally extend to combat in cyberspace) and the U.S.’s new, more aggressive cybersecurity strategy.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Defense announced a new cybersecurity strategy and revealed that Russian hackers had accessed an unclassified DoD network. Also last month, a Department of Justice official explained that the U.S. is giving “no free passes” to cybercriminals, regardless of whether or not they are nation-state actors. This Russian-Chinese cybersecurity pact could be seen, says Kellerman, as a way of the two countries presenting a united front against the U.S.

As Kellerman puts it, “Oh, Mr. Secretary of Defense, you’re taking the gloves off? Well, there’s two of us. Now what?” Continue reading . . .

SF Source Dark Reading  May 2015

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