How to protect yourself and our children in the cyber environment

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Analyzing the causes of negative social phenomena in Russian society and ways to overcome them, it is extremely important to take into account the historically formed cultural code of the Russian person.

Cyber threats of our time: essence and solutions

By nature, a Russian person is a kind person, acutely and sensitively perceiving evil, negative manifestations and challenges, primarily on an intuitive level. An automatically natural reaction for us is an attempt to distance ourselves, to distance ourselves from such a phenomenon and its source.

First of all, because it is absolutely alien, unacceptable and incomprehensible to us. The way out for us is to call a special knowledgeable specialist (sorcerer, medicine man, doctor, etc.) to describe the "disease", make a "diagnosis" and find a solution.

This is one of the key features of Russian society, and at present, of internal threats. When faced with negative phenomena, a Russian person for the most part does not know how to resist them, he is not used to solving these issues on his own.

In the conditions of a sharply aggressive social environment, characteristic of our society for the last 30 years, the natural defensive reaction of the psyche due to misunderstanding is shock, paralysis.

In the conditions of a large-scale "hybrid war" unleashed against Russia, everyone should be able to independentlydescribe the "symptoms" and the source of the disease, make a "diagnosis", find a solution. It will not be possible to distance ourselves, to close our eyes to the problem. “Opponents” of Russia, including world criminal gangs, are using advanced technologies, perfected over the years, of consistent, repeated impact on the human psyche using modern information tools.

The theory and practice of information-psychological impact on people have been improved since the two world wars of the XX century and during numerous armed conflicts of a regional scale. The emergence of radio, television and, finally, the Internet has made it possible to carry out psychological operations both in targeted and in large numbers.

At the moment, the world recognizes the very fact that there is a war or confrontation, which is called differently: cold war, soft power, information war, hybrid war, content war.

Today, the leading country in the offensive conduct of "hybrid wars" is the United States. Back in 1985, they established the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (Airborne).

In June 2010, a directive from the US Secretary of Defense renamed Psychological Operations (PSYOP) to Military Information Support Operation (MISO) to specifically cover up the overtly hostile nature of the activity.

In 2009, the United States created a separate CyberCommand structure to conduct offensive operations on the Internet. The unified cyber command essentially exercises control over all the special structures of the United States. This was not done by chance: the world has become informational; accordingly, the formation and management of cyberspace has become task of strategic importance.

It should be noted that the expenditure of the US budget on cybersecurity in 2016 amounted to almost $ 14 billion. (For comparison, the total budget of the Russian Federation for information security was about 250 million in 2016)

The training of personnel for the creation and maintenance of this process in the United States is a system and has been conducted for a long time. Moreover, the United States annually attracts more than 100 thousand minors to work on information and offensive actions on the Internet (commenting on news, trolling, mailing, etc.) in relation to other countries and peoples. Moreover, no one cares that "children's minds" in the hands of the military are a predictable mine of aggression for the future of all mankind on an unpredictable scale.

Concept cybersecurityas an instrument of defense and offensive in this confrontation was formulated by the world community relatively recently. Cybersecurity includes a set of tools, strategies, security principles, risk management approaches, actions, training and technologies that are used to protect the cyber environment, the resources of organizations and users. Cybersecurity means achieving and maintaining the security properties of an organization's or users' resources against the corresponding cyberthreats.

Today, cyber threats include not only illegal malicious penetration into information technical systems, but, first of all, filling with meanings, ideas, standards of the information space and all users involved in it.

The ratio of the importance of actions to ensure cybersecurity in the technological and social spheres is estimated at 10% to 90%. The greatest threat comes from the introduction of information "viruses" into the minds of people cultivating degradation processes. The difficulty is that the mechanism of the formation of public opinion and methods of working with society in the information environment is not visible. This allows psychological operations today to be carried out without hindrance by creating and managing content on social networks.

The content forms public opinion, has an informational and algorithmic effect on a person, prompting him to take certain actions, be it the choice of clothes, food, place of study, pastime, work, country for life, candidate for elections. Media products are becoming a tool for the formation of standards of thinking, values, algorithms of human behavior.

For this, the following techniques are used: first, psychological pressure; secondly, imperceptible penetration into consciousness; third, latent violation and distortion of the laws of logic. This includes the substitution of a thesis, a false analogy, a conclusion without sufficient reason, a substitution of a cause by an effect, a substitution of concepts. As a result of such operations, the intellectual potential of a person is reduced. The intellect becomes sharpened for consumption, destruction and is no longer able to independently rise above the established algorithms.

Today, special cybercenters … The formation of public opinion occurs due to the massive supply of information and the user's unconscious trust in the received data.

For this, cyberbots are used - computer programs that automatically perform a set of certain actions based on an artificial intelligence module. Bots carry on propaganda using all sorts of methods of stuffing information.

They are capable of injecting and distributing content at tremendous speed while impacting millions of people at the same time. Their actions are difficult to distinguish from those of ordinary people on the Internet. For example, under the leadership of the US Cyber Command alone, at least 7 cyber centers operate (and there are also Great Britain, Germany, France, China, Israel). Together, 500 operators working in one such center manage 50,000 cyberbots. In practice, this means that there are 100 bots per operator.

It is from such cybercenters that news commenting, trolling, information distribution and so on are massively carried out. It should be understood that the impact is possible from any point in cyberspace: in a virtual environment there is no connection to a specific territory.

Thus, many years of aggressively directed propaganda against the Russians in Ukraine inevitably led to an armed conflict within the country, to an incessant military clash between Russia and Ukraine.

Even 15 years ago, the inhabitants of Ukraine itself could not imagine that they would openly fight against Russia. But today the population, affected by the information war, in an altered state of the psyche, massively earns on the grief of the inhabitants of their own country.

Moreover, Ukraine is being used as a forward point in the information war against Russia. According to official UN data, in the Donbas, about 10 thousand inhabitants of Ukraine died in hostilities, according to unofficial statistics, more than 50 thousand deaths from the Ukrainian side were registered.

And the same unofficial statistics speaks of more than 50 thousand Ukrainian citizens who work online for foreign cyber centers - through trolling and spam on the Internet, they conduct aggressive propaganda against Russia, discrediting its image, cultivating a vicious lifestyle.

US instructions for conducting a "hybrid war" include the following sequential steps to conduct it: 1) information confrontation: preparing the territory for the perception and imposition of alien values and interests; 2) undermining the economy using political, technical, informational means (Russia has not yet experienced a kind of economic coup in 2014 with a multifaceted devaluation of the Russian ruble); 3) undermining political status up to color revolutions, change of political leadership; 4) cleaning up politically incorrect, who do not accept the imposed changes.

It is the purposeful whipping up of negativity in the mass media that inevitably leads to the manifestation of negativity in life. Including forms crimes in the youth environment (delinquency, drug addiction, deviant behavior, extremism). Basically, crimes are committed by young people under the influence of a vicious aggressive information environment. This directly affects not only the statistics and the quality of social phenomena, but also complicates the conduct of preventive work.

To date, the world and our country have not yet created institutions capable of stopping these destructive processes. Moreover, there is not even an understanding of what is happening and all its perniciousness among the professionals and the ordinary population of our country and other countries of the world

The story of Varvara Karaulova, a student of the Cultural Studies Department of the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, the daughter of an intelligent family, who became an ISIS activist, can and should serve as a vivid and illustrative example for our society. Despite the widespread media coverage, few people understand the essence of this “phenomenon”. The forensic medical examination recognized the Moscow State University student as sane, but this is far from reality.

The point is, first of all, that the criteria for assessing the state of the personality are critically outdated.

The survey based on the methods of information perception does not assess the state of the algorithms for the perception and processing of information about the surrounding world by a person. They do not take into account that this person is deeply "affected", her psyche is not able to adequately perceive what is happening and make the right decisions. This condition is comparable to a concussion on the battlefield..

Outwardly, a person retains the ability to reproduce habitual rituals and stereotypes of behavior, has excellent factual knowledge. However, under the massive flow of information impact, there was a critical shift towards an inadequate interpretation of facts, events, phenomena, a complete value disorientation. In this context, the question “Did she understand or did not understand what she was doing?” Is completely inappropriate.

The unequivocal answer is no. The shell-shocked are carried away from the battlefield and undergo a long rehabilitation. The “emptiness in the soul” that Varvara speaks of is a consequence of the child's psyche, unable to independently interact with the real world, and, unfortunately, it is characteristic of the entire young generation, daily emasculated by mass media technologies.

This "vacuum" among young people is not being properly filled today by state, public institutions and families. We need to talk about the responsibility, first of all, of the state and society as a whole.

This and other examples indicate that in such conditions it is impossible to focus on established approaches (medical, pedagogical, legal, etc.), customary professional criteria. And accordingly, it is at least erroneous and even criminal to talk about the introduction of standardization in work with children and youth in the field of education and prevention of negative social phenomena. At least for today, no sound criteria and system of adequate actions have been developed yet.

At the moment, Russia is at the stage of developing decisions on the formation of a system for ensuring the information security of society. We are gradually assessing the specifics of the time, rebuilding ourselves to new approaches and methods of working in the information space.

The leadership of our state focuses on cybersecurity issues and announces them both on the domestic and foreign policy contours. At the VII International Forum for a Safe Internet, which took place in April 2016 in Moscow, Presidential Aide I. O. Shchegolev noted the need to develop a global consensus and identify the responsible forces in connection with the growing tensions in the world, new threats related to cyberspace, and the importance of giving states great powers in regulating the Internet space.

In this direction, state normative documents are adopted, which are of a fundamental and framework nature. In December 2015, the Concept of Information Security for Children was approved, aimed at ensuring the harmonious development of the younger generation, provided that all negative factors associated with the formation of a hyperinformation society in Russia are minimized.

December 5, 2016 by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation a new "Doctrine of information security of the Russian Federation" was approved … The doctrine is equated in importance with measures to protect the borders of our state. Border protection belongs to the competence of the state security bodies, has a large infrastructure, formed over the years, and appropriate funding.

The implementation of information security measures to a similar systemic level of work, the full-fledged formation of cyber troops in Russia will be carried out over the course of about 15 years.

This is not only about operational confrontation and repelling cyberattacks in the technical sphere, where Russian troops are showing themselves worthy today. The most difficult and the main task is to identify the latent socio-cultural threatleading to the destruction of the cultural code of Russia, and, accordingly, development of operational and strategic countermeasures to prevent launching negative scenarios through the information network.

Anatoly Valerievich Rudakov, expert of the Fund for National and International Security:

“Modern mass media form a special kind of identity due to mental viruses. They are developed both for commercial purposes and for military geopolitical purposes, when the task is to manipulate specific target groups.

This can be resisted, and there is only one recipe here - it is the protection of those forms of identity that have historically developed in our country. The existing network of various kinds of information resources, through which destructive meanings are transmitted, can only be resisted by a counter-network developed by people who defend their values and meanings."

The information war has already deeply affected our society today. Therefore, an adequate response and solution of modern challenges are possible only on condition of large-scale involvement of the population in interaction with the authorities and assistance to law enforcement agencies.

At the moment, for now, various governments, corporations, and civil society remain the subjects of governance in the cyber environment. And civil society has a special role - users who create and distribute content that form an adequate view of the world are now equated with the soldiers of the "people's militia" on the field of confrontation for the minds of our children and a healthy, secure future.

In Russia, it is necessary to form such civil society, in the full sense, able to carry out self-defense measures independently … It is necessary to start with educational and explanatory work with the population.

Otherwise, the theme of the day and the call for help will not be perceived by society, it will not be possible to form "Divisions of the people's militia".

With all this, relying only on the "people's militia" is stupid and useless. Social forces of self-organization can only temporarily suspend destructive phenomena. Similar to actions during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. the population needs the support of a professional army - artillery, tanks, aviation - to defend their land.

This, in turn, requires the organization of special training. Just as it is impossible to assign pilot qualifications in absentia without proper training, when faced with a real cyber threat, “correspondence orders and degrees” will in fact not help anyone.

In the modern context, we are talking about specialists who are capable of:

- describe the phenomena and processes occurring at the level of the country and the world;

- to assess the current events from the position: good-bad, acceptable-unacceptable, expedient-inexpedient;

- to conduct independent explanatory work on the ground regarding modern threats and challenges, ways of their solution;

- organize community groups, incl. from among the youth, leading active counter and proactive work on creative propaganda, clarification in social networks.

The main obstacle to building a modern defense system can be “pseudo-patriotism” with the setting of deliberately “false goals”, the imposition of a fight against the “mythical enemy” and “imaginary victories” in the interests of earning political bonuses in absentia on patriotism, war and grief. In these conditions, a situation may arise when problems are actively discussed, everyone loudly condemns and fights against the phenomenon - but the matter does not go beyond words.

In this case (by analogy with history), the "people's squads" raised to defend the Motherland will not wait for the main forces to approach and will simply perish.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, President of the Russian Federation:

“This work is not easy, and the main" ambush ", the main danger of this work is if it is formal. She will then kill our ultimate goal in the bud, from the first steps. After all, people are so tired of direct and stupid propaganda that they stopped trusting it. And in this matter, honesty, openness and, ultimately, efficiency are very important. Extremely important things.

If we do not achieve this state of work in this direction, the result will be zero or negative. The template in this work is absolutely unacceptable, it is counterproductive."

Meeting with representatives of the public on the spiritual state of youth and key aspects of moral and patriotic education.

Thus, you need:

- Carrying out extensive educational work with the population on cybersecurity issues and explaining methods of countering modern threats, teaching to preserve their cultural code;

- the formation of groups of the population ("divisions of the people's militia") for the creation and distribution of creative content, conducting explanatory work;

- training of specialists in preventive work with children and youth on a special value basis and criteria;

- formation of a system of special training in the field of information security;

- creation of domestic expert information and analytical centers that are able to solve cybersecurity issues in all directions;

- development and implementation of theoretical, methodological and analytical material to ensure this activity (including the development of new criteria for assessing negative social phenomena, the degree of their impact on the personality and consequences).

This material was prepared by the expert community of the SI Center. On the one hand, we are developing scientific and analytical approaches to ensure the cybersecurity of society, on the other hand, in practice, we are working out methods of working with the younger generation, with the population based on modern information approaches. [1] We pay special attention to the development of an algorithm in humans to distinguish between different quality information flows - the main defense mechanism against cyber threats.

In carrying out this work, by our example, we are faced with all the negative manifestations of the information environment, including all kinds of opposition from different groups. Some of them act unconsciously, being the bearer of stitched destructive values, someone deliberately for profit.

And, nevertheless, we know that if these issues are not dealt with, no one has a chance - neither you and me, nor our children. Under these conditions, it will not be possible either to wait it out or brush it off, we are talking about the survival and preservation of man as a species on planet Earth.

It depends on each inhabitant, our awareness - whether we will have a future and what it will be like. Each of us is able to fight back the most negative scenarios with our constructive actions.

In turn, we call on all healthy forces not to surrender under the yoke of aggressive factors, to actively deal with cybersecurity issues and help others in this, day after day to form civil defense forces to protect against information aggression and create conditions for training professional specialists in this area in Russia. …

The basic principles of the impact on a person of virtual space and information technologies included in the category of cyber weapons are covered by the analytical film "Territory of Security".

It will be useful to everyone who is interested in the sustainable development of our country, in the peaceful future of our children.

The material was prepared by the expert community SI Center

[1] For more than 7 years in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, the SI Center, together with municipal authorities, has been implementing a complex social project "Territory of Security".