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Russia tells UN it wants vast expansion of cybercrime offenses, plus network backdoors, online censorship

Michael Wojcik Silver badge

My guess is that the US government is at least as heavily engaged in "cyber crime" (and probably better at it) as Russia is, just not for altogether the same ends.

Really, there's no need to guess; it's amply documented. I don't think any reputable IT-security experts disagree that the US is one of the top-tier nation-state IT-weapon developers. Generally speaking, the top-tier and second-tier rankings from various observers are pretty consistent, and they're supported by plenty of evidence. In the case of the US, that includes disclosures like the Snowden and Winner leaks, breaches like the Shadow Brokers dump, journalist and NGO investigations into incidents such as Stuxnet, and information from official sources such as government reports.

On the other hand, it doesn't make much sense to make wild claims about which of the top-tier nations "does the most", as some commentators have here. We have some idea of the scope of US hacking activity, and some of the scope of Russia's, and China's, and Israel's, and so forth. Those give us lower bounds. The evidence to support upper bounds is much scarcer and less reliable.

And, more importantly, it doesn't matter. All the top-tier, second-tier, and even third-tier states are doing as much as they can. As you say, they have different goals as well as different capabilities, and those shape what those efforts look like and how successful they are. That's a far more interesting and useful observation than the sophomoric tu quoques being thrown about by some people.

I do take exception to this statement, though: "The West will never agree to a proposal that will in any way endanger or expose our hacking". History shows quite the opposite. Nations, including Russia and those of "the West", have been perfectly happy to propose, and agree to, all sorts of things in public, while ignoring them in private – and for that matter often abrogating them in public as well.

There will be more proposals like this. There may well be treaties. They won't change much of anything, except perhaps the public posturing and claims of innocence. If anything, they'll be a bit more incentive for signatories to improve their false-flagging efforts.

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