Moscow repudiates accusations of being
involved in the NotPetya cyber attack that had struck Ukraine in June 2017.
MOSCOW, February 15. /TASS/. The Kremlin strongly rejects
groundless accusations of Russia being behind the NotPetya cyber attack on
Ukraine in June 2017, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told
reporters.
"We strongly reject such accusations, we consider them to be groundless, they are part of the similarly groundless campaign based on hatred against Russia," Peskov said commenting on a statement made by British Foreign Office Minister for Cyber Security Tariq Ahmad, in which he had attributed the NotPetya cyber attack to the Russian government. "The UK Government judges that the Russian Government, specifically the Russian military, was responsible for the destructive NotPetya cyber-attack of June 2017," Ahmad said, adding that the cyber attack "disrupted organizations across Europe costing hundreds of millions of pounds."
"We strongly reject such accusations, we consider them to be groundless, they are part of the similarly groundless campaign based on hatred against Russia," Peskov said commenting on a statement made by British Foreign Office Minister for Cyber Security Tariq Ahmad, in which he had attributed the NotPetya cyber attack to the Russian government. "The UK Government judges that the Russian Government, specifically the Russian military, was responsible for the destructive NotPetya cyber-attack of June 2017," Ahmad said, adding that the cyber attack "disrupted organizations across Europe costing hundreds of millions of pounds."
In January
2018, the Washington Post said the CIA had "attributed to Russian military
hackers a cyberattack that crippled computers in Ukraine last year, an effort
to disrupt that country’s financial system amid its ongoing war with separatists
loyal to the Kremlin." "The GRU military spy agency [the Main
Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces - TASS] created
NotPetya, the CIA concluded with ‘high confidence…’ according to classified
reports cited by US intelligence officials," the newspaper added.
On June 27,
2017, a ransomware blocking access to data and demanding money for unblocking
it attacked dozens of energy, telecom and financial companies in Russia and
Ukraine, spreading across the world afterwards. Experts from the Group-IB
computer security company said the Petya encrypting ransomware was behind the
massive cyber attack. The malware prevented operating systems from loading,
blocked computers and demanded a ransom of the Bitcoin equivalent of $300. The
Kaspersky Lab later came to the conclusion that the world had faced a new
ransomware, naming it NotPetya.
Source: ITAR-TASS 15-02-2018
