Samvel Martirosyan: Cyber security of Armenia and Azerbaijan is  vulnerable

ArmInfo. - Turan. In matters of cyber security and information war, Armenia and Azerbaijan pose the greatest danger to each other. This is expressed in cyber attacks, fake news in order to compromise or misinformation the other side. Armenian expert in  the field of cyber security Samvel Martirosyan told about this in an  interview with Turan.

According to him, the first large cyberwar between the two countries  took place in the winter of 2000. "Then there was a massive attack of  Azerbaijani hackers on the Armenian segment of the Internet and about  30 Armenian websites were hacked - almost all at that time were  Armenian Internet sites.

The Armenian side launched a counter attack and hacked the same  number of your sites. The damage was mutual and as far as I know, a  Security Council meeting was convened in Baku to discuss the  situation," said Martirosyan.  Because of the Karabakh conflict, the  information war between the two countries was fought for a long time,  but the cyber war began, it can be considered the winter of 2000.   However, this is not the only threat. There are significantly more  serious threats to both countries in the world and in the region. "We  do not have such powerful Internet backbones and if we conduct a  powerful DDoS-attack (Distributed Denial of Service) against us, then  we can turn off the Internet in the entire South Caucasus region  including Georgia," says Martirosyan.

There is an interesting point. It lies in the fact that in cyber  wars, too, use mercenaries. "In the CIS space and in the world there  are many hacker groups that you can pay for and they organize any  attack.  From time to time, both you and we are confronted with such  DDos attacks that are not coming from here.  So, in the last 5-6  years there have been massive DDos attacks on the state sites of  Armenia and Azerbaijan, which clearly came from a third party,  "Martirosyan notes.  On the question of who it could be, he assumes  that it could be the "teachings" of some serious hacker groups who  "train" on poorly protected networks. There are not many such groups  in the world, but they are quite common, which makes it difficult to  calculate them exactly.  However, there are well-known hacker groups  in the world, behind which there are specific countries or their  state structures. However, of these groups is Fancy Bear - the  structure of the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the General  Staff of the Russian Federation).  The hackers of this group are  accused of hacking into the sites of American government agencies,  Hillarie Clinton and interfering in the elections in the United  States.  "Over the past 5-6 years, there were at least 5 serious  incidents when they attacked Armenian resources, including military  and diplomats. In this regard, both we and you are poorly protected,"  said the expert.  As for the Azerbaijani hackers on Armenian  resources, over the past year two cases were recorded: an attack on  the websites of the parliament and the government, but they did not  cause any significant damage. The damage here is more psychological.  In response, Armenian hackers hack Azerbaijani sites and put  something of their own there.  A serious cyber war occurred in 2012,  when the websites of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, as  well as a number of state structures, were hacked. "Strangely enough,  there is a benefit from Azerbaijani hackers, since after your attacks  in Armenia they began to seriously engage in defense. If it were not  for your hackers, the evolution in this matter would be much slower.   Therefore, during the April 2016 war, your attacks no longer caused  such damage, although they were more sophisticated and looked like  the promotion of fake news to sow panic. Recently, we have noticed  some changes: the youth who hooligans, displaying curses or flags on  our sites, have disappeared.  Fake news began to be written in very  competent Armenian. This means that the authorities began to work  with them and now we should expect more targeted attacks, from which  there will be more harm," said Martirosyan.  Cyber war between  countries in the event of large-scale hostilities will play a  significant role, the expert believes.  "I believe there will be  attempts to disable each other's infrastructure. We see an example of  such a cyber war in Ukraine, where the military confrontation between  Russia and Ukraine is taking place in cyber space to a great extent,"  says Martirosyan.  In his opinion, the parties will not only use  their resources, but also hire outside hacker groups.  In this sense,  both sides have enough vulnerabilities. The fact is that digital  development is faster than creating a security system. That is,  attacking is easier than defending and these are problems of many  countries.