Big surge in cyberattacks on Russia amid US hacking hysteria – Russian security chief
©
Kacper Pempel / Reuters
RT,
15
January, 2017
While
the US continues to publicly accuse Russia of numerous hacking
attacks without providing any proof, it actually actively uses its
own advantages in cyberspace for surveillance and intelligence
purposes, Russia’s security chief has said.
“Obama’s
administration accuses Russia of hacking attacks without giving any
proof, but deliberately ignores the fact that all major internet
servers are located on US territory and are used by Washington for
intelligence and other purposes aimed at retaining [US] dominance in
the world,” the
head of Russia’s Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, said in an
interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily.
Patrushev
went on to say that Russia is pursuing a goal of forming an
international system based on common rules of responsible behavior in
cyberspace that would be equally applicable to all states. He added
that Russia is also constantly improving its system of countering
cybersecurity threats.
Earlier,
the Russian president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said in
an interview with
NBC News that Russia is not accusing US authorities of attempts to
break into its government servers, despite numerous hacking attacks
on the Russian president’s administration website carried out from
US territory.
Russian
president’s official website “is
subjected to hacking attacks hundreds and sometimes even thousands of
times a day,” Peskov
said, adding that “some
hackers attack this site from US territory” while
others do it “from
China, India or European countries.”
“However,
it does not lead to a situation when we say that we know [US
President Barack] Obama ordered [this attack] and the White House is
behind it,” he
said, adding that such claims would be regarded as nonsense.
In November, NBC News reported that the US military managed to break into the Kremlin servers as well as into the commanding systems of some Russian energy supply and telecommunication systems and threatened to use its “cyber-weapon” against Russia in case of a major hacking attack against the US.
In
response, Peskov said at that time that Moscow maintains a sufficient
level of cybersecurity to combat any such threats.
The
US has repeatedly accused Russia of hacking attacks and meddling with
the US presidential elections last year. On January 6, the US
intelligence community released the unclassified findings of its
investigation into what it says was Russian meddling in the 2016
presidential election.
The
report did not provide any hard evidence of Russian interference,
relying instead on analyses from the CIA, FBI and NSA that drew on
intelligence collected by the three agencies. The CIA and FBI
have “high
confidence” in
the results of the report, while the NSA only has “moderate
confidence.”
The
conclusions presented in the paper were based on “the
behavior of Kremlin-loyal political figures, state media, and
pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either
directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the
Kremlin.”
‘Obama took his domestic policy mistakes out on Russia'
The
head of the Russian Security Council also slammed Obama for bring
US-Russian relations to a historic low and damaging Russia’s
relations with NATO and the EU in an attempt to draw public attention
away from his own internal policy failures.
Patrushev
told Rossiiskya Gazeta that he had an “impression
that the US Democratic Party takes its own failures and mistakes out
on Russia.” At
the same time, he said that it is Obama administration’s domestic
policy failures and not imaginary Russian influence that lead to
Donald Trump’s election victory.
Patrushev
particularly drew attention to the fact that NATO warships increased
their Black Sea presence three times. Intensity of the NATO
reconnaissance aviation flights near Russian borders has doubled
while the number of fights of the NATO aircraft equipped with
airborne early warning systems has grown nine times in the same area,
he said.
He
went on to say that the US continues to build up its missile defense
shield in Europe by stationing ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems
in two Eastern European NATO countries – Romania and Poland – as
well as in South Korea.
“Joint
efforts of the West are particularly aimed at disruption of the
integration processes involving Russia and discrediting of the idea
of the ‘Russian space,’ thus threatening the security of Russia
and a number of other states,”Patrushev
said.
He
also criticized Obama’s administration for its reluctance to
effectively cooperate with Russia in Syria in fighting terrorist
groups. “Unfortunately,
Obama’s administration said more than it did in cooperation with
us. It eventually reduced anti-terrorist cooperation [between the US
and Russia] in Syria to nothing,” he
said.
At
the same time, he expressed his hope that Russia would be able to
build more “constructive
relations” with
the new administration. “I
believe that some opportunities for constructive cooperation with the
US will emerge in the fields of fighting terrorism, information
security and some other areas,” he
said.
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