Western special services are trying to compromise Russia’s cyber security, Army Gen. Sergei Smirnov, first deputy director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), said on Tuesday.
“We need to secure our society against the activity of Western special services who would like to inflict damage upon our cyber security,” he said while summing up a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s regional antiterrorism structure.
“We know that Western special services establish special units, as part of their departments, aimed at studying this problem and at creating a relevant base in countries where they want to conduct that activity,” Smirnov said.
“We know that the problem of the Arab Spring, the problem of revolutions that occurred on the African coast, they all faced it,” he said.
“These are new technologies, used by Western special services to create and maintain constant tension in societies,” Smirnov said. “The goal is serious - up to deposition of the political regime that has existed in these countries.”
The Arab Spring swept the Arab world after a street vendor in Tunisia killed himself in December 2010 after the authorities banned him from selling vegetables without permission.
A wave of demonstrations and protests followed in Egypt, Libya and Yemen, resulting in the ouster of the countries’ leaders. Protests also aggravated the situation in other regional countries, including Syria.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on March 21 that the Russian government is considering setting up a dedicated cyber-security command, responsible for protecting the armed forces' information systems.
Rogozin said Russia would follow the steps of the United States and NATO aimed at staving off the growing threat of cyber attacks on vital military communications networks.
Soon after Rogozin’s statement, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said his ministry has already started working out an armed forces cyber security concept.
Smirnov said special services’ countermeasures to cyber security threats would not have any “impact on society from the standpoint of democratic norms.”
“Society must defend itself. If the enemy uses ‘dirty’ technology, we need to clear the space from such activity in some way,” he said.
