DM Monitoring
MOSCOW: The Kremlin on Tuesday rejected US warnings that it may be preparing to conduct cyber attacks in response to Western sanctions, and said it did not engage in “banditry”.
US President Joe Biden on Monday told businesses to do more to protect themselves against possible cyber attacks by Russia, warning there was “evolving intelligence” that Moscow was exploring options on that front.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The Russian Federation, unlike many Western countries, including the United States, does not engage in state-level banditry.”
Russia has previously rejected similar allegations, including accusations that it was responsible for hacks on Ukrainian banking and government websites in February.
Senior White House cybersecurity official Anne Neuberger on Monday said important US companies that provide critical infrastructure should improve their cyber defenses, but that there was “no certainty” such an attack would occur.
Russian Deputy Industry and Trade Minister Vasiliy Shpak suggested Russia create a division of cyber troops to combat increased threats, in which developers could hone their skills and demonstrate their patriotism.
“After this, I hope, they will think 10 times before leaving their motherland in pursuit of easy money in foreign companies,” the RIA news agency quoted Shpak as saying on Tuesday.
The cybersecurity arm of the telecoms firm Rostelecom has said efforts to disrupt the operations of company websites have intensified this month.
Rostelecom CEO Mikhail Oseevskiy said attacks on Russian websites were continuing and becoming more varied.
“We understand what the risks are and how they can be mitigated,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
Meanwhil, A major supplier of meteorological data from Western and other governments suspended cooperation with Russia on Tuesday, becoming the latest weather-related agency to restrict information sharing in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Weapons experts said the data – which includes near instantaneous measurements of wind speed and direction, sunlight, precipitation and other factors – could prove crucial in planning a biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine.
The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), an intergovernmental organisation based in Germany, told Reuters that a special council of member states met Tuesday morning and decided with immediate effect to suspend the licences of Russian users and suspend a bilateral cooperation agreement with Russia’s top meteorological agency, including all exchange of data and training activities. A EUMETSAT spokesperson declined to say what drove the decision.
Washington and its allies have warned that Moscow could be planning to use chemical or biological weapons. But weather data from some of those same countries – including the United States and Britain – had continued to make its way to Russian agencies via EUMETSAT feeds. At least three other bodies in Europe had stopped sharing data with Russia in the wake of its Feb 24 invasion of Ukraine.
The moves highlight how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced some scientific agencies to choose between their ethos of open exchange of scientific data versus the risk of providing information that could be used to attack civilians.
EUMETSAT operates technical infrastructure that allows the data from numerous satellite feeds to be distributed, in some cases nearly instantly, to recipients.
Prior to Tuesday’s decision, EUMETSAT said it had stopped sending data from EU satellites to Russia and Belarus on instructions from the European Commission, but had continued to relay information from other European satellites to those two countries as well as meteorological observations from governments around the world.
