The Russian government has denied allegations that state-sponsored hackers have stolen the Covid-19 vaccine from educational and pharmaceutical organizations in the West. Speaking to CNBC on July 20, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said “there are no hackers” running for the government.
“There are no hackers running for the Russian government, so our government does not coordinate or coordinate any action through hackers,” he said, adding that no one had been hired for the express purpose of accessing pharmaceutical companies’ websites.
Siluanov said he did not want the hackers to be “involved in these activities” because Russia seeks to expand its own vaccine as opposed to the coronavirus.
Last week, the United States and the United Kingdom accused a government-linked Russian piracy group, called “APT29” or “Welcoming Bear,” of “several organizations interested in advancing the Covid-19 vaccine in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, possibly with the goal of stealing high-value data and assets similar to the progression and testing of Covid-19 vaccines.”
Russia’s denial comes when a long-awaited new REPORT from the UK ISC calls Russia “a highly capable cyber actor with a proven ability to conduct operations.”
The ISC report also states that “immediate action” is needed to help intelligence confront “this very competent adversary.”
The Russian finance minister’s statement that there are no hackers running for the Russian is “a lie with an exposed face,” says Philip Ingram, MBE, a former intelligence colonel in the British Army. However, he issues that this declaration corresponds to the Russian doctrine of ‘maskirovka’, which ‘masks’ or ‘denies the duty of anything’.
Ingram publishes: “The long-awaited Russia report published makes it clear that ‘Russia’s cyber capacity, when combined with its willingness to deploy it maliciously, is a subject of great fear and poses an immediate and pressing risk to our national security. ‘
He added: “Duty rests with the Russian army intelligence agency, the GRU. A team of GRU cyber-experts arrested through the Dutch government at the offices of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in 2018. denials are not shown through the facts».
Ian Thornton-Trump, RSSI in Cyjax, agrees. “The safety net is united in the consensus view that Russian cyber operations are an integral component of Russian army operations and foreign policy. Evidence of all known past attacks and many other unreleased classified attacks is insurmountable and irrefutable.”
At the same time, Thornton-Trump is not surprised that vaccine research is being targeted by hackers as countries across the world try to put a halt to the global pandemic crippling their economies.
He warns: “The critical national infrastructure including pharma (research of the vaccine) and biopharma (production of vaccine) as well as the supply chain have all seen increased attacks from CRINK (China, Russia, Iran and North Korea).”
I am a freelance cybersecurity journalist with more than a decade of pleasure in writing news, reviews and reporting. Report and analyze cybersecurity and privacy violations
I am an independent cybersecurity journalist with more than a decade of pleasure in writing news, reviews and reporting. I report and analyze cybersecurity and privacy stories that break with a specific interest in cyber warfare, application security and knowledge misuse through giant generation companies. In addition to Forbes, you can locate my paintings in Wired, The Times, The Economist and The Guardian. Contact me at [email protected].