Category Archives: vladimir putin

Biden says he gave Putin list of 16 sectors that should be off limits to hacking

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President Joe Biden said he gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a list of 16 critical infrastructure sectors, from energy to water, that should not be the subject of malicious cyber activity during a meeting between the two men in Geneva on Wednesday. The two heads of state also agreed to task cybersecurity experts from each government “to work on specific understandings about what’s off limits and to follow up on specific [cyber incidents] that originate in either of our countries,” Biden said at press conference after a roughly four-hour meeting with Putin. “I talked about the proposition that certain critical infrastructure should be off limits to attack, period, by cyber or any other means,” Biden said. It was not immediately clear if the list of critical infrastructure sectors that Biden referenced corresponds with the 16 sectors designated by the U.S. government. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to […]

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DOJ didn’t ask for Russia’s help tracking down Colonial Pipeline hackers, senior official says

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The U.S. Justice Department did not ask Russian law enforcement for help in tracking down the perpetrators of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack because Moscow’s history of harboring cybercriminals essentially makes it a waste of time, according to a senior department official. “I think we’ve reached the stage, today, where there’s very little point in doing so,” said John Demers, the assistant attorney general for national security. “We have made those requests in the past.” The Russian government is “not just tolerating this,” Demers said at CyberTalks, presented by CyberScoop. “They’re actively getting in the way of U.S. law enforcement efforts to combat this type of hacking,” he added, referring to previous Russian efforts to block U.S. requests to extradite accused hackers from other countries. The remarks were pre-recorded on June 3. The Justice Department did not answer follow-up questions about possible Russian cooperation in the weeks since. The Russian […]

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Biden, Putin conduct diplomatic dance over hypothetical hacker exchange

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A discussion over an exchange of accused hackers from Russia and the U.S. could be on the agenda this week when President Joe Biden meets with his Russian counterpart on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Vladimir Putin, in an interview with Russian state media Sunday, said his government would consider the possibility of extraditing accused hackers from Russia to America under the condition that the U.S. would do the same. During a news conference at a Group of Seven (G7) summit, Biden said he would be “open” to the idea of holding accused hackers in the U.S. accountable for violating the law. The two world leaders are scheduled to meet on Wednesday amid a spate of high profile ransomware attacks in which alleged Russian-based hacking gangs disrupted operations at Colonial Pipeline, a U.S. fuel carrier, and the meat processing firm JBS. “If there’s crimes committed against Russia that, […]

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Chinese hackers implicated in breach of Russian government agencies

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Chinese hackers were likely behind a series of intrusions at Russian government agencies last year, security firm SentinelOne said Tuesday. Malicious code used in the breaches is similar to hacking tools associated with a broad set of suspected Chinese spies that have also targeted Asian governments in recent years, SentinelOne researchers said. SentinelOne’s research builds on a report released last month by the Federal Security Service (FSB), one of Russia’s main spy agencies, and the cyber unit of telecom firm Rostelecom. It said Russian government agencies had been targeted by “cyber mercenaries pursuing the interests of the foreign state.” The attackers collected stolen data using top Russian technology providers Yandex and Mail.Ru, according to the report, which did not name a culprit in the breaches. SentinelOne’s findings point to an often overlooked reality in U.S.-centric cybersecurity discussions: that the Russian and Chinese governments conduct plenty of cyber-espionage against each other. Last […]

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Hacking accusations are meant to stir conflict ahead of US summit, Russian president says

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that accusations that the Russian state is in anyway linked to a recent ransomware attack against global meat supplier JBS are “nonsense.” The FBI has blamed the attack on REvil, a group thought to be based out of Russia. U.S. officials have not tied the attack to the Russian government. That breach came after an unrelated incident against Colonial Pipeline, a major U.S. fuel supplier, in which the FBI blamed another alleged Russia-based gang, DarkSide. “I have heard about some meat processing company, it’s nonsense, we understand it’s just laughable. A pipeline? It’s nonsense, too,” Putin told a Russian news station. U.S. President Joe Biden emphasized in May that U.S. intelligence officials do not believe the Russian government was involved in the Colonial Pipeline hack. “We do not believe — emphasis on we do not believe — the Russian government was involved in […]

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Meat chain JBS says US production is returning after ransomware attack

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The U.S. division of JBS, which accounts for an estimated one-fifth of the country’s beef production, said it expects the “vast majority” of its meat plants to be operational on Wednesday after a ransomware attack ground work to a halt. “Our systems are coming back online and we are not sparing any resources to fight this threat,” JBS USA CEO Andre Nogueira said in a statement Tuesday evening. The breach at JBS, the world’s largest meat supplier, has caused disruptions to the company’s facilities in Colorado, to Canada and Australia. Workers were sent home from some plants in an industry that has already faced disruptions because of the coronavirus pandemic. Nogueira said that JBS USA and Pilgrim’s, one of the company’s brands, were able to ship product from nearly all facilities in the U.S. on Tuesday. “The company also continues to make progress in resuming plant operations in the U.S. […]

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Biden says US will ‘raise the cost’ for Russian hackers after espionage campaign

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President Joe Biden on Thursday said the days of the U.S. “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions” in cyberspace were over as he pledged to make the U.S. government more resilient in the face of hacking. “We’re launching an urgent initiative to improve our capability, readiness and resilience in cyberspace,” Biden said in his first major foreign policy address as president. “We’ve elevated the status of cyber issues within our government,” Biden added, citing his appointment of National Security Agency veteran Anne Neuberger as deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology.   Biden has made responding to a suspected Russian hacking operation against multiple U.S. government agencies a priority in the early days of his presidency. He has tasked U.S. intelligence agencies with assessing the damage from computer intrusions in which suspected Russian attackers exploited key technology providers to breach numerous Fortune 500 firms and […]

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Weeks before Election Day, Putin trolls the US with an offer for cyber truce

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Add the prefix “cyber” to any concept common in geopolitics — diplomacy, norms and so on — and the resulting phrase immediately becomes less precise than its parts. The latest example is “truce,” courtesy of none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin didn’t use “cyber truce” in a statement Friday that called for the U.S. and Russia to create “a comprehensive program of practical measures to reboot our relations in the field of security in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs).” But the term fits. The former KGB agent’s proposal was otherwise broad and vague. He mentioned nothing about Russia’s well-documented misdeeds in cyberspace, and he made no accusations about what the U.S. might be doing in response. The White House dismissed Putin’s proposal in a statement to the New York Times, and Russia-watchers expressed the usual caution. Russia is interfering in our elections today, at this moment, […]

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Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Gets 9 Years

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A well-connected Russian hacker once described as “an asset of supreme importance” to Moscow was sentenced on Friday to nine years in a U.S. prison after pleading guilty to running a site that sold stolen payment card data, and to administering a highly secretive crime forum that counted among its members some of the most elite Russian cybercrooks. Continue reading Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Gets 9 Years→

Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Pleads Guilty

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Aleksei Burkov, an ultra-connected Russian hacker once described as “an asset of supreme importance” to Moscow, has pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to running a site that sold stolen payment card data and to administering a highly secretive crime forum that counted among its members some of the most elite Russian cybercrooks. Continue reading Russian Cybercrime Boss Burkov Pleads Guilty→