Usually in my posts I try to provide answers. This time I can only manage a question, but it’s an interesting one.
We constantly hear complaints, if not outright whines, about the US being attacked in cyberspace, either by China or Russia. We’ve gotten used to these attacks, and our response is becoming more and more like “what else is news?”
But there’s an interesting angle here: in the more-or-less symmetrical US-Russia-China great cyber triangle we rarely if ever hear about Chinese or Russians being hacked. Is it that they are not being attacked? Not at all. For example, recently Russia detected a five-fold increase in powerful DDoS attacks over the last year, the longest one lasting ninety days. That one was by any standard a major cyber security event. Was it a big media deal in Russia? Not really– it was barely mentioned.
Initially I thought this difference was mainly a cultural thing. In Russia boys grow up in a culture where if you’re beaten up, you don’t cry “Mommy, he hit me!”, and for sure you don’t complain to teachers or the police. Just heal your bruises and learn to defend yourself. I believe that in China the culture in this respect is somewhat similar. The reaction to cyber attacks on the US is just the opposite. Instead of developing a really effective technology of cyber defense and immediate counterattack, we whine loudly time after time and waste our credibility with vague threats, when everyone knows there will be no real response.
However, cultural difference is probably not the reason for Russia’s and China’s mute response. As an example of the opposite response, we can recall frequent border disputes between Russia and China in 1960s (over the areas where nobody was present for many miles except a few occasional border guards). During those clashes there were extensive media coverage on both sides, with many diplomatic notes saying something like “This is the 104th serious warning.”
So, the question remains: compared to our constant whining, what is the reason for the very muted Russian and Chinese responses to cyber attacks?