US largely defends itself from latest Russian hack, will not affect Biden-Putin summit: WH

The White House has said that it believes the United States government managed to largely defend against the latest massive cyberattack on federal agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations blamed on Russian intelligence operatives. It also said that the spear-phishing campaign should not further deteriorate the relations between Moscow and Washington ahead of next month’s summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden.

As per reports, the officials had downplayed the cyberattack as “basic pishing” which involved the hackers used malware-laden emails to target several computer systems of the United States and foreign government agencies along with other groups. On late Thursday, Microsoft unveiled the hacking effort and said that it believed most of the emails were blocked by automated systems that marked them as spam. As of May 28, the company also noted that it was “not seeing evidence of any significant number of compromised organizations at this time.”

‘Don’t think it’ll create new point of tension’

As per the Associated Press, James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said that “I don’t think it'll create a new point of tension because the point of tension is already so big.” He also said that “This clearly has to be on the summit agenda. The president has to lay down some markers” to make clear “that the days when you people could do whatever you want are over.” Further, when White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the impact on the Biden-Putin summit due to the latest hacking effort, she said, “We’re going to move forward with that.”

While the US  has previously blamed Russia or Russia-based criminal groups for the hacking operations, it did not blame anyone for the latest incident. Microsoft attributed the latest cyberattack to the groups behind the SolarWinds campaign, in which the security of at least nine federal agencies and several dozens of private sector companies was breached through a contaminated software update. What Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt revealed in the blog post on May 27 as “Another Nobelium Cyberattack,” the hackers gained access to an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development. Hence, masquerading as a government body, they targetted 3,000 email accounts at over 150 different organizations.

Burt said, “This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations. While organizations in the United States received the largest share of attacks, targeted victims span at least 24 countries. At least a quarter of the targeted organizations were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work.”

“Nobelium, originating from Russia, is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020. These attacks appear to be a continuation of multiple efforts by Nobelium to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts,” he added. 

Not just the cyberattack that rocked the United States government earlier this earlier, but a range of issues have clouded the upcoming June 16 Biden-Putin summit. One of the issues of disagreements between both nations remains the US’ denial to rejoin the ‘Open Skies’ arms control pact, which Moscow has already termed as ‘political mistake’. Now even though the White House has claimed to largely fend off the cyber attack, the revelation of a new spy campaign so close to the leaders’ meet mounts pressure on the White House to ramp up efforts to reportedly confront Kremlin over the aggressive cyber activity.

IMAGE: AP