The UN Security Council on Tuesday held its first formal public meeting on cybersecurity, addressing the growing threat of hacks to countries’ key infrastructure — an issue US President Joe Biden recently raised with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
While the US envoy to the world body asked that member states respect a framework already in place, her Russian counterpart called for a new treaty to be drafted.
“The risk is clear. Cooperation is essential” to combat such attacks, US ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, without mentioning Russia, which is often accused by Western countries of hosting hackers or directly engaging in cyberwarfare.
“The framework that UN member states have worked so hard to develop now provide the rules of the road. We have all committed to this framework. Now, it is time to put it into practice.”
At their summit earlier this month in Geneva, the US president set out red lines for Russia — 16 “untouchable” entities, ranging from the energy sector to water distribution.
“This is the generic list of critical infrastructure which every country has,” said one European ambassador who specializes in cybersecurity and spoke to AFP under condition of anonymity.
Already in 2015, the agreement had been reached on “refraining from malicious cyber activities against each other’s critical infrastructures as UN member states,” the envoy said.
Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow would play a proactive role in the global fight on cybercrime, calling for the adoption of “new norms” through a legally binding treaty convention by 2023.
“If the threats posed to global cybersecurity have made us all equal, then we must ensure that debate takes place with all UN member states, and not within a tight circle of technologically developed states,” the Russian diplomat said.
