What do you think?
Rate this book
Unmasking Maskirovka: Russia's Cyber Influence Operations
In sharp contrast to its utopian heyday, cyberspace is now a hotly contested domain in which nations, corporations, and individuals leverage information for strategic gain. Recent revelations and reportage on cyber espionage, manipulation, and digital disinformation campaigns underscore today's political and technical challenges. Each day we are exposed to different types of influence operations, running the gamut from commercial efforts all the way to political disinformation campaigns that aim to subvert democratic processes and alter political outcomes. “Unmasking Maskirovka” details the perceptions of Russian strategic and military leaders and their thought processes for employing cyber warfare capabilities. In “Unmasking Maskirovka,” Daniel Bagge contrasts national strategic approaches in cyberspace to enable a better understanding of the long-term goals behind Russia's cyber warfare campaigns. This book provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of the importance of cyberspace operations, why such activities are so often successful, and how influence operations span the spectrum of conventional and digital statecraft.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 12, 2019
33 people are currently reading
100 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 24, 2019
It’s a great read in case you’re interested in Russian hackers, who have been making it to top headlines for the last few years. The reason everyone got so concerned with Russian hackers working for the government, is, of course, their active participation in a manipulation of the electoral processes in the United States, which Russian government, unsurprisingly, strongly denies. Apart from being super political, this book can still be handy for anyone who wants to learn how Russians think and what drives Russian information warfare. The foreword of the book outlines the possible target audience, who might be interested in reading the book, among those are policymakers and strategists, as well as anyone else who works with information in cyber realms.
Dan Bagge, Czech cyber defense expert, guides a reader through Russia’s political and military objectives and offers thoughtful and potentially effective countermeasures. He argues, that for measures to be truly effective, one needs to know their enemy. Thus, he provides a list of strategic doctrinal and military documents, breaks them down in chunks, and explains what is implied by every statement he highlights from those docs. He says, that Russian hybrid approach, built around the concept of reflexive control, knows no distinction between peacetime and war: all policies are a continuation of the previous agenda. However, Bagge argues that one may fall victim to those campaigns by trying to mimic them, conversely, he suggests refusing the temptation to copy Russian tactics, which would inevitably lead to undermining western liberal values. The book provides the analytical framework of the information warfare and a practical manual on how to cope with such threats; it strives to educate and gives advice on building resilience against Russian scaremongering tactics.
Bagge says that cyber literacy is not something solely dedicated to computer geeks, but is essential for anyone who wants to contribute to national security. Previous considerations of cybersecurity as the purely technical matter has led to the unintended consequences of underestimating the importance and strength of cyber warfare capabilities. It’s not enough to master the technical information, one should strive to combine the technical world with policy and real-world events to understand how to combat such threats.
Russians have been able to target well-established societal functions, like commercial advertising, elections, political contests, democratic foundations, and even individual perceptions, through things like fabrication, manipulation, and military deception. The difference between the three is that while fabrication is providing purely false information, manipulation is using truthful information but distorting it to one’s own benefits; military deception is, however, more clandestine, and can further be divided into active and passive. Passive deception is hiding intentions, military readiness, capabilities from opposing forces. Active deception creates false assumptions or something that is not even in existence. For example, the preparation of a hostile act and not carrying it out repeatedly provides a false sense of security for an adversary, the tactic also known as “familiarity breeds contempt.”
The author claims that Russian academics and military experts perceive cyber warfare as a combination of technology and information-psychology, like a holistic concept. The reason Russians engage in such psychologically clandestine operations is that they do not possess the advanced military technology, even if they claim otherwise. The subversion of adversary's national infrastructure without reaching the threshold of armed conflict provides for limitless possibilities and requires less dollar-investment.
The primary instrument of cybernetics is reflexive control, i.e. modeling decision-making systems and disrupting them, or influencing the adversary in such a way that they make decisions favorable for the deceiver. There are four prerequisites for reflexive control: manipulation of sensory awareness, hiding true intentions from the opponent, influence the opponent’s information resources, and a combination of tampering with data processors and sensory awareness.
Now, if that sounds complicated, then probably because it is. For example, consider the Soviet military school of thought. In order to influence the objectives of is opponents, the school offered to provide the adversary with such amount of ambiguity and uncertainty about the Soviet goals, that the adversary was unable to define any aim whatsoever.
The documents, that the author spends time analyzing, are Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation from 2010 and 2015, Conceptual Views Regarding the Activities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from 2010, and The Value of Science in the Foresight from 2013.
These documents clearly outlined the setting up of counter-propaganda aimed at preventing negative consequences of the spread of disinformation about Russian policy. And in fact, as we can clearly see, the counter-propaganda engine is fulfilled with the establishment of Sputnik and Russia Today. RT (despite being founded to battle disinformation) is involved in spreading disinformation itself, although favorable for Russians. Also, there’s a great deal of “preserving traditional morals and spiritual values of Russians,” however, none of those values and morals are clearly defined in any of those documents.
In the chapter on cyber-related examples, the author provides the following instances from the recent past. First, diverting the increasing Western interest in Russian military actions in Ukraine by conducting a cyber attack on the French Television network TV5Monde under the disguise of Cybercaliphate, which later proved to be false and used as a distraction mechanism by the proxy group APT28, aka Fancy Bear. Second, CyberBerkut performing DoS attacks on the cell phones of Verkhovna Rada and more than 500 hundred web-based information sources, back in 2014. Third, Russia Today publishing article presenting false accusations that the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn was involved in the establishment of Mirotvorce webpage. There are many other instances of planting false information and fake news throughout the book, which are outside of the scope of this review. So, I encourage everyone, to buy the book and see for themselves. Some pretty captivating read, and at times a true eye-opener. One of this horrifying, and yet, nevertheless, interesting attacks that the author describes is Russian hacking of Ukranian billboards to show provocative content, depict Ukrainian political leaders as anti-Russian, display mass graves, and use it as propaganda.
In any case, although, being political, the book is still worth reading in the era of fake news, attacks on privacy, and false accusations. Bagge says it’s important to educate people to discern false information from true, have a strong nervous system, and be able to think and respond quickly relying on solid logical conclusions. It’s also important to disseminate positive narratives contrary to the negative content of the opponent.
Dan Bagge, Czech cyber defense expert, guides a reader through Russia’s political and military objectives and offers thoughtful and potentially effective countermeasures. He argues, that for measures to be truly effective, one needs to know their enemy. Thus, he provides a list of strategic doctrinal and military documents, breaks them down in chunks, and explains what is implied by every statement he highlights from those docs. He says, that Russian hybrid approach, built around the concept of reflexive control, knows no distinction between peacetime and war: all policies are a continuation of the previous agenda. However, Bagge argues that one may fall victim to those campaigns by trying to mimic them, conversely, he suggests refusing the temptation to copy Russian tactics, which would inevitably lead to undermining western liberal values. The book provides the analytical framework of the information warfare and a practical manual on how to cope with such threats; it strives to educate and gives advice on building resilience against Russian scaremongering tactics.
Bagge says that cyber literacy is not something solely dedicated to computer geeks, but is essential for anyone who wants to contribute to national security. Previous considerations of cybersecurity as the purely technical matter has led to the unintended consequences of underestimating the importance and strength of cyber warfare capabilities. It’s not enough to master the technical information, one should strive to combine the technical world with policy and real-world events to understand how to combat such threats.
Russians have been able to target well-established societal functions, like commercial advertising, elections, political contests, democratic foundations, and even individual perceptions, through things like fabrication, manipulation, and military deception. The difference between the three is that while fabrication is providing purely false information, manipulation is using truthful information but distorting it to one’s own benefits; military deception is, however, more clandestine, and can further be divided into active and passive. Passive deception is hiding intentions, military readiness, capabilities from opposing forces. Active deception creates false assumptions or something that is not even in existence. For example, the preparation of a hostile act and not carrying it out repeatedly provides a false sense of security for an adversary, the tactic also known as “familiarity breeds contempt.”
The author claims that Russian academics and military experts perceive cyber warfare as a combination of technology and information-psychology, like a holistic concept. The reason Russians engage in such psychologically clandestine operations is that they do not possess the advanced military technology, even if they claim otherwise. The subversion of adversary's national infrastructure without reaching the threshold of armed conflict provides for limitless possibilities and requires less dollar-investment.
The primary instrument of cybernetics is reflexive control, i.e. modeling decision-making systems and disrupting them, or influencing the adversary in such a way that they make decisions favorable for the deceiver. There are four prerequisites for reflexive control: manipulation of sensory awareness, hiding true intentions from the opponent, influence the opponent’s information resources, and a combination of tampering with data processors and sensory awareness.
Now, if that sounds complicated, then probably because it is. For example, consider the Soviet military school of thought. In order to influence the objectives of is opponents, the school offered to provide the adversary with such amount of ambiguity and uncertainty about the Soviet goals, that the adversary was unable to define any aim whatsoever.
The documents, that the author spends time analyzing, are Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation from 2010 and 2015, Conceptual Views Regarding the Activities of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation from 2010, and The Value of Science in the Foresight from 2013.
These documents clearly outlined the setting up of counter-propaganda aimed at preventing negative consequences of the spread of disinformation about Russian policy. And in fact, as we can clearly see, the counter-propaganda engine is fulfilled with the establishment of Sputnik and Russia Today. RT (despite being founded to battle disinformation) is involved in spreading disinformation itself, although favorable for Russians. Also, there’s a great deal of “preserving traditional morals and spiritual values of Russians,” however, none of those values and morals are clearly defined in any of those documents.
In the chapter on cyber-related examples, the author provides the following instances from the recent past. First, diverting the increasing Western interest in Russian military actions in Ukraine by conducting a cyber attack on the French Television network TV5Monde under the disguise of Cybercaliphate, which later proved to be false and used as a distraction mechanism by the proxy group APT28, aka Fancy Bear. Second, CyberBerkut performing DoS attacks on the cell phones of Verkhovna Rada and more than 500 hundred web-based information sources, back in 2014. Third, Russia Today publishing article presenting false accusations that the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in Tallinn was involved in the establishment of Mirotvorce webpage. There are many other instances of planting false information and fake news throughout the book, which are outside of the scope of this review. So, I encourage everyone, to buy the book and see for themselves. Some pretty captivating read, and at times a true eye-opener. One of this horrifying, and yet, nevertheless, interesting attacks that the author describes is Russian hacking of Ukranian billboards to show provocative content, depict Ukrainian political leaders as anti-Russian, display mass graves, and use it as propaganda.
In any case, although, being political, the book is still worth reading in the era of fake news, attacks on privacy, and false accusations. Bagge says it’s important to educate people to discern false information from true, have a strong nervous system, and be able to think and respond quickly relying on solid logical conclusions. It’s also important to disseminate positive narratives contrary to the negative content of the opponent.
May 8, 2020
Great introduction to reflexive control.This answers so much and makes sense of the increase in conspiracy theories spread by David Booth and Qanon
May 12, 2020
Critical read for anyone who wants to understand the current information war space and Russia’s role in it
April 1, 2020
New Perspective
Well researched, depth and source materials to help illuminate a non-western, ‘hostile first’ view. History, philosophy and tactics all helpful to shape a new perspective on non-kinetics and asymmetrical effect.
Well researched, depth and source materials to help illuminate a non-western, ‘hostile first’ view. History, philosophy and tactics all helpful to shape a new perspective on non-kinetics and asymmetrical effect.
March 10, 2021
Whilst this book promises a lot. It's delivery is laboured and in dire need of an editor and proofreader. Overall it reads like an undergrad paper rather than an expose of Russian methodology for undermining her foes. I honestly cannot recommend this book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews