Negotiating with Hackers

Reuters has a story today on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) negotiating with Russia to stop its hacking of their members.  Singapore has had some high profile cases of late, including the theft of a government database with 1.5 million health records.  What is odd about this is nobody has named Russia in the hacking of these records.  It seems like something China would do before the Russians would do it, but since they are keeping quiet about the source of the hacking, it will be awhile before anyone knows. 

Do we have any confidence that negotiating your way out of hacking will actually do any good?  Only Russia and China have come to agreement on how this might benefit one another and actually signed agreements which they seem to have kept.  It seems like one precedent must be political and strategic benefit to both parties.  Please tell me what that benefit would be to Russia in an agreement with the ASEAN states.  In my experience, negotiating with hackers is like negotiating with terrorists.  The agreement works as long as the parties are both satisfied with compliance by one another. 

Russia can't hack the whole world, though they have certainly tried on occasion.   There is not much evidence of hacking by Russian hackers in the ASEAN states, so they are not giving up very much in agreeing to cooperate on cyber security.  We can be sure they will not violate their agreements with China and would not cooperate in rooting out Chinese hackers.   So, they are agreeing to do something they are not doing anyway.  Do we actually believe that Russia would sign that agreement and keep it?  No.  Both the Russians and Chinese will sign agreements to almost anything but their signatures are usually not worth the paper they appear on.  The UN is a clear example of where they both sign agreements which they violate, often before the ink is dry.  But, if the ASEAN wants to feel good about signing an agreement that means nothing and won't be honored by Russia, have at it.