China NATO fears new serious acts of sabotage and cyber attacks

Nato fears new serious acts of sabotage and cyber attacks on the Alliance's territory.

"We are observing that Russia in particular is becoming increasingly willing to cause physical damage and endanger human lives in our countries through sabotage," said a senior official on the sidelines of the current NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels. China, Iran and North Korea are also active in cyber attacks. Both China and Russia are conducting an ongoing campaign to spread malware.

This is about espionage, but also about being able to trigger disruptions in the event of rising tensions. Russia is focusing on critical infrastructure and industrial control systems in particular, said the official.

Hackers publish confidential information

As an example of a particularly serious cyber attack that has already taken place, the official cited a huge attack against the NATO member state of Albania, which was probably carried out by Iran. This had paralyzed the border control system and ensured that all files of the Ministry of the Interior were published on the Internet. "Every police investigation, every email between police officers, every secret witness, every court case and every Interpol file was public," he explained.

Underwater pipelines are particularly vulnerable

According to the information, underwater infrastructure is particularly vulnerable to sabotage. "In the NATO countries, we rely on an extensive network of pipelines and cables," said the NATO official, referring to gas, oil and data lines. More than one million kilometers of this infrastructure are involved, which Russia is continuously mapping through a program launched decades ago. This also includes ships, submarines and unmanned and remote-controlled underwater vehicles. According to the report, the Russians have the ability to plant explosives or cut cables "whenever they wish".

NATO also sees it as problematic that there is an imbalance in vulnerability because Russia is not as dependent on such infrastructure as the allies.

From arson to murder plot

The expert named arson, the instrumentalization of refugees, attacks on railroad lines and assassination plans against leading industry representatives as further activities that are presumably controlled by Russia. For example, it is considered likely that the assassination of the CEO of Germany's largest arms manufacturer, Armin Papperger, was planned at times.

According to information from NATO, it must be expected that Russia will launch large-scale programs to influence elections in allied countries. This could involve the dissemination of false or misleading information, cyber attacks or vote-buying, as was recently the case in Moldova. All of this is an organized campaign, said the official.

NATO plans to update its defense strategy

In response to the developments, the foreign ministers of the NATO states now want to decide on a revision of the NATO strategy for countering hybrid threats this Wednesday. This generic term covers actions that state or non-state actors use to harm other countries without waging open warfare. As a rule, they are difficult or impossible to attribute to a specific perpetrator.

According to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, there should be an increased exchange of intelligence information and better protection of critical infrastructure, among other things. It is also about the question of how attacks should be retaliated against in the future.

According to the expert, it is high time that action was taken. The problem is that we have become accustomed to hybrid attacks becoming more intense and more frequent, he said. As a result, we have not reacted appropriately for a long time.

Most recently, in November, two fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea were damaged within a short period of time. These were a cable running between Sweden and Lithuania and one between Finland and Germany. The cause is still unclear in both cases. The Swedish authorities are investigating possible sabotage. The investigators are focusing on a Chinese ship called "Yi Peng 3", which is said to have passed the affected parts of the cables at the time in question.

SDA