Press release on cyber security activities of some countries
Correspondent | Friday February 22, 2019 14:37
In 2018 Russian State System of Detection, Prevention and Liquidation of Consequences of Computer Attacks (GosSOPKA) identified more than 4.3 billion computer attacks on Russian critical information infrastructure with more than 17 thousand identified as most dangerous. In comparison with 2017 the number of attacks has almost doubled. Most of the attacks were committed on “Direct line with Vladimir Putin — 2017” (June 15), the day of the Presidential elections in 2018 (March 18) and the 2018 FIFA World Cup (June 14 - July 15, 2018).
Commenting on the attempts to interfere in the Presidential elections, N.Murashov added that the main target was the failure of the CCTV systems of the voting process across the country, which would be a prerequisite for waging a campaign to discredit the final results. According to him, in 86 countries of the world operated a botnet of 30 thousand computers every day, each bot has generated 15 billion requests to DNS servers.
The Western Countries actively fix the idea in the public mind that Russia organises most of the attacks, interferes in the political processes of other countries, including the impact on electorate. However, the accusations have never been confirmed by reliable technical data that can be analysed by experts. But it is well-known that most of the giants of the information technology industry are under the jurisdiction of the United States.
The NCCCI representative, referring to the statistics of the leading companies in the field of information security for the period of 2016-2017 years, said that the main sources of malicious activities were the United States (49.6 per cent of the total number of attacks) and the European Union. At the same time, Washington and Brussels oppose Russian initiatives in the UN to ensure international information security.
Moreover, many Western countries, including the US, Britain and France, support the production of malicious software (SOFTWARE) and prevent the recognition of this criminal activity which is simply explained by the fact that this multibillion-dollar business involved more than 40 major firms. For example, the infamous French company “Vupen”, engaged in the sale of vulnerabilities.
Her clients included the national security Agency (USA) and the intelligence agencies of other NATO countries. Subsequently, the founder of this company created the similar one in the United States — “Zerodium” looking for the vulnerability of different mobile devices.
The most expensive are the insecurity of Apple products (up to $1.5 million), while clients have to pay up to $500 thousand for overcoming the weaknesses of the messenger Telegram, Viber, WhatsApp and IMessage. Getting this information to criminals has led to the emergence of viruses (WannaCry, NotPetya, BadRabbit) affecting nearly 70 countries around the world.
The Russian side expresses confidence that it is high time the international ban on the development of malware was adopted to increase the security of Internet users and invites all interested parties to open and equal cooperation aimed at preventing conflicts in the information space.
The Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of Botswana