Russia, China are totally BFFs when it comes to Internet security

Moscow, Beijing will share info when the Internet is used for "criminal purposes."

by Cyrus Farivar - May 10, 2015 1:30am AEST

While Chinese Premier Xi Jinping visited Moscow this weekto celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Middle Kingdom and Russia also signed a 12 page agreement (Russian) that essentially pledges their cybersecurity support to one another.

Or, put another way: they agree not to attack each other online.

Reading news accounts of the agreement, and the document itself via Google Translate (unfortunately Ars has zero Russian speakers on staff), it appears that the document contains a lot of generalities on cooperation and repeated language referring to national sovereignty over the Internet.

It also contains this line, that both nations agree to "the exchange of information and cooperation in law enforcement area in order to investigate cases involving the use of information and communication technologies for terrorist and criminal purposes."

"For Russia the agreement with China to cooperate on cyber security is an important step in terms of pivoting to the East," Oleg Demidov, a cyber-security consultant at the PIR Center, an independent think tank focusing on international security, told the Wall Street Journal. "The level of cooperation between Russia and China will set a precedent for two global cyber security powers."

Other Russian experts, including Alexander Salnikov, deputy director of the Moscow-based Institute of Information Security, told the New York Times that "perhaps 70 percent" of the pact had been borrowed from a previous agreement under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. But, he pointed out that the language "protecting internal sovereignty in cyberspace" is new.