The American corporation Microsoft believes that Russian intelligence was allegedly involved in a cyberattack launched in March 2020 against US government departments and private companies using SolarWinds’ Orion software. This statement was made on Tuesday, February 23, at a hearing in a special committee on intelligence of the US Senate by the president of the corporation, Brad Smith.
According to him, Microsoft “has solid evidence that points to Russian intelligence.” At the same time, Smith did not provide any evidence of his words, reports TASS.
“The tools used in the hacking are not similar to those used by China, North Korea or Iran. They are most similar to what Russia uses, “said Kevin Mundia, head of computer security company FireEye, without specifying details.
In turn, SolarWinds, the company most affected by the cyberattack, refrained from speculating about those responsible for the hacking of its software. In his testimony, the company’s CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna stated that the hack was carried out in order to gain access to certain SolarWinds customers, the malicious code was injected into the Orion software between March and June 2020, it has now been removed and the security threat is no longer there … He also noted that none of SolarWinds’ other products were affected by the cyberattack. At the same time, Ramakrishna did not make a single assumption about the possible perpetrators of the hacker attack.
On February 17, the US stated that a hacker attack through the powerful SolarWind software in March 2020 was likely carried out by a hacker of Russian origin. The cyberattack affected nine federal departments and about a hundred companies.
In December 2020, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Peskov said that Russia had nothing to do with hacker attacks on American state institutions. The Kremlin spokesman called for an end to unfounded accusations against the country. He recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously proposed to the American side to conclude an agreement in the field of information security, while the United States refused to participate in bilateral and multilateral agreements on cybersecurity.
In turn, the head of the international committee of the Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev, said that Washington uses any hacker attacks on its systems as an excuse to blame Moscow for this. He also recalled that the United States does not support the initiative of the Russian Federation on international cooperation in information security issues.