The State Duma proposed not to punish hackers acting in the interests of Russia

It is necessary to work out the issue of exemption from liability of “white” hackers acting in the interests of Russia inside the country and abroad, said the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy Alexander Khinshtein, transmits TASS.

“We are talking about, in general, working out an exemption from liability for those persons who act in the interests of the Russian Federation in the field of computer information both on the territory of our country and abroad,” he said.

It will be possible to talk about this in more detail when the initiative is clearly formulated, the deputy added. According to Khinshtein, it is necessary to use all available resources to fight the enemy attacking the Russian Federation. Now for the creation and use and distribution of malicious computer programs can be held criminally liable under Art. 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, according to which it can threaten up to seven years.

Earlier today, a representative of the Ministry of Digital Transformation told Vedomosti that the agency launched a program to search for vulnerabilities in state resources. At the first stage, white hat hackers will check the security of the Gosuslugi portal and the Unified Identification and Authentication System (ESIA). At the next stages, the list of state information systems will be supplemented.

On January 19, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko announced that in 2022, about 50,000 cyber attacks on Russian Internet resources were repelled. According to him, the state “has never been subjected to such an invasion before.” As Shamil Chich, an analyst at the IZ:SOC cybersecurity monitoring center of Informzashchita, told Vedomosti, due to the political situation in 2022, so-called “hacktivists” were added to the hackers, who are massively recruited on social networks.