Perhaps its time countries like Britain, the US and Australia should stop blaming their cyber adversaries and instead start acting on how to make their country’s cyber infrastructure immune to cyber attacks.
That’s because the populace of the respective countries is no more interested in who is launching the attacks. But are more interested in knowing how their country is defending such attacks and what they are doing in retaliation.
Now, coming back to the crux of the article, the British government has announced that the recent indiscriminate and reckless cyber attacks on its infrastructure are a handiwork of the Russian Military Intelligence (GRU).
In a statement released by Jeremy Hunt, the UK Foreign Secretary said that GRU is responsible for cyber attacking political institutions, businesses, media organizations and sports events in its country and around the world.
The British National Cyber Security Center has openly confessed that hackers behind such attacks are identified to be GRU Personnel.
Yesterday, Australia seems to have joined UK in attributing the attacks to the GRU when Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne placed the following blames on Russia-
• The October 2017 BadRabbit Ransomware Attack that hit Ukraine, Germany, and Turkey.
• Hacking the Democratic National Committee of US in 2016
• Attacking World Anti Doping Agency in retaliation to the ban imposed on Russian players from participating in the Olympics.
Payne and Morrison said that Russia has shown a total disregard towards ‘The International Community’ by showing malicious cyber behavior on nations belonging to the west.
Note 1- GRU which can be abbreviated as Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije happens to be the Main Intelligence Directorate of Russia led by the President of Russia- Vladimir Putin. Although, the Russian media claims the head of this agency is Sergey Shoygu, the Defense Ministry, Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that all the decisions related to this military intelligence unit are taken only after consulting Mr. Putin.
Note 2- The Intelligence unit of UK has also earlier blamed the GRU for the March Nerve agent attack on Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in the city of Salisbury. However, Putin and his government denied all these allegations and said that the Skripals were traitors and scumbags and the evidence showing Russian intelligence as culprits were fabricated.
Note 3- A noted cybersecurity firm from Britain has disclosed that the state-sponsored Russian hackers have worked under codenames including Fancy Bear, Pawnstorm, CyberCaliphate, Tsar Team, Sandworm, and Voodoo Bear to carry out attacks.
