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British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson is in the main hall on the second day of a meeting of the North Atlantic Council at a meeting of Defense Ministers of the United States. NATO at NATO Headquarters in Brussels on Thursday 4 October 2018. (Francisco Seco / AP)
BRUSSELS – The British government on Thursday accused the Russian military intelligence service GRU of "indiscriminate and indiscriminate cyberattacks", accusing it of everything from hacking medical data of high-level athletes to the disturbances of the Kiev metro to attacks against the email accounts of the Democratic National Committee. .
"Where Russia will act indiscriminately and without worrying about its cyberattacks, we will expose them," Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said Thursday at a meeting with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. , and other defense ministers at NATO. . "We believe that by doing so, it will deter such action in the future."
The British Foreign Ministry said Russian military intelligence services were behind six separate cyber attacks between mid-2015 and October 2017. Four of these attacks were attributed on Thursday. Although some have been highly publicized and obviously political, including the hacking of the Democratic National Committee, others have affected the business world and media life.
Britain has accused the GRU of having hacked electronic mail accounts on a "small British TV channel", stealing their content. She accused Russia of stealing and then releasing the confidential medical records of athletes of the World Anti-Doping Agency. Russia is behind the BadRabbit ransomware attack of October 2017 that rendered computer systems unusable in Ukraine and the Russian central bank.
[In Russia’s Far East, villagers recognize a Skripal poisoning suspect]
Governments have been cautious in the past before attributing similar attacks, in part because their origin may be difficult to trace. But Britain and its allies have demanded much more transparency this year, especially after the Skripal attack in March. Skripal was himself a former military intelligence officer who became a double agent. Russian President Vladimir Putin described Wednesday as "traitor" and "scumbag".
"The actions of the GRU are reckless and blind: they try to undermine and interfere in elections in other countries; they are even prepared to harm Russian companies and Russian citizens, "British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said in a statement. "This type of behavior reflects their willingness to act without respect for international law or established norms, and with a sense of impunity and without consequences."
The Pentagon announced on Wednesday that it intended to offer for the first time its cyber-offensive capabilities to NATO allies, further strengthening the role of the alliance in what is becoming a real virtual battlefield. Mattis discussed the issue with other defense leaders at the Brussels meetings.
Read more:
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