We in the West have enjoyed relative peace since World War 2. We handled brief intervals of war with near zero impact on our civilian populations. Since circa 2013, hackers linked with China (& North Korea) and Russia have been engaged in wholesale cybercrime. This escalation was in tandem with other acts of aggression by these countries, which fall below the threshold of war.
Russia invaded the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014, burned Syria to the ground in 2015, and in 2022, has escalated its cybercrime involvement in tandem with the full scale invasion of Ukraine. What’s their end goal? In maintaining a high level view of our peace-time utopia in Europe and in the United States, have we become complacent through it all?
We only snapped out of our peaceful world view when Ukrainians hit us with a taste of what was coming our way, should they fall to Russian aggression? After the Ukrainians correctly linked Russian motives back to us, you would expect our societal horror of World War 2, along with war stories from the old, to shock us into action. Yet, it did not.
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Ukraine was the first warning sign in 2014, which we ignored. Only NATO took affirmative action by training the outdated and horribly under-prepared Ukranian army. In 2015, and against a wall of condemnation by humanitarian organizations, Russia burned Syria to the ground.
The West was relatively mute in responsive discourse, as were some of our allies in the region. In 2022, Russia’s blatant breach of international law saw a full scale invasion of Ukraine, which was the spark to awaken us. Even at that, across Europe and the United States, disbelief and, sometimes, anti-Ukrainian sentiment came from certain quarters. Why?
Russian Invasion Of Hearts and Minds By Digital Means
I wrote extensively about how we as individuals are subject to disinformation, misinformation, and other forms of digital subversion, thanks in the main to social media platforms. Yet, to understand this threat, we must look at how cybercrime enabled digital subversion and now, vice versa.
In our sleepy hollow in Europe and in the United States, we have enjoyed the luxury of viewing war from afar, as we live our daily lives. Around 2013, Web 2.0 drove technological progress to new heights. Good and bad actors quickly harnessed its interactive power. Since then, we have been merrily feeding social media platforms with the most intimate details of who we are as individuals and in aggregate as a people.
Cybercrime Has A Bedfellow
Cybercrime’s explosion results from many things, including moving too fast at technological scale, and not fully understanding the consequences of such actions. Social media’s ferocious use of data analytics, data targeting individuals, and data product monetization are classic examples of this. It strays away from Social Media’s original intent as a unifier of people, and does so in the worse way possible.
The EU has led the way in policing this for-profit motive, but is it too little, too late? That answer, for me, is still unclear. Digital subversion, thanks in part to intelligence supplied by cybercrime, has aggregated to a national security threat for all targeted democracies. It has literally occurred under our noses.
Our unquestioning acceptance of truth as we consume content on our favourite social media platform feeds a hazy misinformation fog, which harms us all. What is also clear is malicious manipulation via false narratives, which appears as an emotionally stirring message tailored to the individual consumer. On aggregate, the structured and repetitive use of weaponized false narratives has, among other things, hidden the repositioning of cybercriminal organisations.
Cybercrime, Digital Subversion, and The Future
Cybercriminal organizations also hide their crossover with hostile state actors behind a wall of disinformation, misinformation, and structured spillovers into our homes, streets, and lives. Russia’s digital subversion and cybercrime escalation in 2022 was proof of this crossover. While we were distracted by these digital subversion campaigns, Russia used this new weapon and also cybercrime to pursue their objectives.
For black-hat cybercriminals, for-profit motives now have state actor objectives as a bedfellow in executing critical infrastructure cyber attacks. The indirect aid supplied by digital authoritarians is a critical part of their success, who are in-turn, enabled by these cybercriminals. We can help by taking appropriate security measures for our digital presence online, and learn to be information resilient.
Sir Ian Fleming, the author of the Bond series, and also a British intelligence officer in World War 2, wrote about “The Invisible War”. This has taken on a new form in modern times, where we all are on the digital front lines. It’s up to us to be armed with the knowledge and knowhow that we need to be victorious.
About the Author
John is a versatile author known for his gripping fiction narratives in the thriller, action, and suspense genres. With a background as a journalist since 2016, and expertise in cloud technologies as an engineer; John brings a unique blend of storytelling prowess and technical acumen to his work.
