West: Russian hackings undermine democracies
COUNTRIES IN COORDINATED CONDEMNATION OF MOSCOW’S PRACTICES
Western countries issued coordinated denunciations of Russia yesterday for running what they described as computer hacking programs to undermine democracies, targeting institutions from sports anti-doping bodies to the chemical weapons watchdog.
In some of the strongest language aimed at Moscow since the Cold War, Britain said Russia had become a “pariah state”. The United States said Moscow must be made to pay the price for its actions. And their allies around the world issued stark assessments of what they described as a campaign of hacking by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency. Russia denied what its foreign ministry spokeswoman called a “diabolical perfume cocktail” of allegations dreamt up by someone with a “rich imagination”.
Britain and the Netherlands accused Russia of sending agents with computer gear and WiFi antennas to The Hague, to try to hack into the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).
The watchdog at the time was looking into the attack on ex-spy Sergei Skripal in Britain and reports of chemical weapons being used by Russia’s ally, Syria, against internal opponents.
The US indicted seven suspected Russian agents for conspiring to hack computers and steal data to delegitimise international anti-doping organisations
This is not the actions of a great power, these are the actions of a pariah state.”
Gavin Williamson| UK Defence Secretary Russia must pay a price, and a number of response options are available.”
Jim Mattis | US Defence Secretary
and punish officials who had revealed a Russian state-sponsored athlete doping programme. The Justice Department said one of the Russian intelligence officers also performed reconnaissance of personnel at Westinghouse Electric Co, a nuclear power company that provides atomic fuel and plant designs.
The accusations were unveiled at briefings around the globe that were held as Nato defence ministers gathered in Brussels to present a united front to their Cold War-era foe.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis, at a news conference in the Belgian capital, said Russia must pay a price, and a number of response options were available.
EU officials said in a statement Russia’s “aggressive act demonstrated contempt for the solemn purpose” of the OPCW. Australia, New Zealand and Canada were among other countries which issued strongly worded statements backing the findings of their allies.
Russia has denied Britian’s claims that its military intelligence agency, the GRU, was behind a string of cyber attacks around the world, it was reported yesterday.
Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said yesterday UK’s Foreign Office’s claims the GRU had attacked targets ranging from Ukraine’s Kiev metro and the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) to a small UK TV station were “a hellish perfume mixture”.
“They’ve put everything into one bottle, maybe a Nina Ricci perfume bottle: the GRU, cyberspies, Kremlin hackers, and Wada,” Zakharova said.
Britain has named Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov, who it says are GRU agents operating under false names, as suspects in the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in Salisbury with the nerve agent novichok transported in a repurposed Nina Ricci bottle.
“The rich imagination of our colleagues from the UK truly has no limits. Who came up with this? I’d like to see it. They’re just like [Hans Christian] Andersen,” Zakharova said.
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt listed six separate cyber attacks between July 2015 and October 2017 that it said were “almost certainly” carried out by the GRU or state-backed Russian hacking groups. While all of the attacks have previously been reported and in most cases linked to Russia, it is the first time four of the six attacks have been directly attributed to the GRU by the National Cyber Security Centre, part of Britain’s communications intelligence service GCHQ. Russia denies any involvement in the cyber attacks or the poisoning of Mr Skripal. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, on Wednesday described Mr Skripal as a “traitor” and “simply a scumbag.”
Britain and Australia on Thursday accused Russian military intelligence of conducting a campaign of cyber attacks targeting political institutions, businesses, media and sport bodies around the world.
Operatives from Russia’s GRU arm carried out various “reckless and indiscriminate” high-profile online attacks, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement.
Many have been previously linked to Moscow, including the 2017 “BadRabbit” ransomware targeting of a Ukrainian international airport and Russian media outlets, and the attempted hacking of the World Anti-Doping Agency in Switzerland, also last year.
“This pattern of behaviour demonstrates (the GRU’s) desire to operate without regard to international law or established norms and to do so with a feeling of impunity and without consequences,” Hunt said.
“Our message is clear: together with our allies, we will expose and respond to the GRU’s attempts to undermine international stability.”
Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) named the GRU operatives as the perpetrators, according to the Foreign Office. The NCSC has “high confidence” that the GRU was “almost certainly” responsible for the 2017 attacks, as well as others including the infamous targeting of the US Democratic Party ahead of the 2016 presidential election, Whitehall sources said.