KGB makes public excuses

Belarusian KGB issued a formal denial of documents published by an international hacker group Anonymous. The documents imply that Belarus could be involved in supplying weapons to Pakistani terrorist groups.

Comment

The fact that the KGB reacted to the scandal around the probable cooperation of the Belarusian authorities with the international terrorist network, increases suspicions against Belarus. KGB’s entry into public debate also indicates its weak position, implying it has no other means to influence the situation.

Analysis of the documents made public by Anonymous, only a small part of which applies to Belarus, casts doubts about them being fake. Otherwise, we are talking about very large-scale falsification of thousands of electronic documents. However, the reaction of the Belarusian diplomats and security agencies in this regard makes suspicions against Belarus stronger.

From the diplomatic point of view a joint response of the Foreign Ministry, KGB and the military industry of the State Committee of Belarus to an anonymous hacker group is totally asymmetrical, and unprecedented. In March 2011 the UN accused Belarus of supplying two military helicopters to the Ivory Coast. Following the reaction of the Foreign Ministry against such accusations the issue was finally resolved and the UN had to apologize.

Finally, the scandal has revealed a serious hole in the structure of information security of Belarus. Anonymous say the documents they made public were obtained from hacked servers of the Italian Cyber-Police. If confirmed, the Belarusian secret services will be responsible for leaking confidential government information to hackers as well as to their Italian colleagues.

The most likely consequence of this internal scandal would be the resignation of Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov, whose name appears in one of the published documents. However, it could happen at a later stage, when the resonance of the scandal goes down.