Faced with another cyber security scandal penetrating the highest levels of U.S. government and military security, 68-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin went back to his old playbook blaming the U.S. for smearing Mother Russia. Putin faced more questions about Aug. 20 poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexi Navalny in the Tomsk, Siberia airport. Blaming the U.S. for smearing him, Putin knows it helps his approval ratings when he knows the international press lins Russia’s FSB Security Service [formerly the KGB] for tracking Navalny down and spiking his tea with Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent, a highly toxic poison made in Russia. It wasn’t that long before, March 4, 2018, that 69-year-old former Russian GRU [Russian intelligence] officer Sergei Skripal and his 35-year-old daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salifbury, England, something also denied by Putin.
Putin said the U.S. CIA tied him to Navalny’s poisoning, saving his life by airlifting him immediately after he took ill to Berlin for emergency treatment. In a joint investigation with Der Spiegel and CNN using mobile cell phone “geolocation” data, the investigation found that the FSB tracked Navalny for years before poisoning him in Tomsk. “It’s a trick to attack the leaders of [of Russia],” Putin told a year-end press conference. Putin admitted that Russian security kept an eye on Navalny but had no need to poison him. “If someone had wanted to poison him they would have finished him off,” Putin said. Putin doesn’t mention Navalny by name, referring to him as “the patient from the Berlin clinic.” Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said Putin admitted the FSB tracked Navalny’s whereabouts. Putin denied that the Russian government had anything to do with Navalny’s poisoning.
Recent cyber attacks by what looks like Russian sources infiltrating SolarWinds Network Management Program, something used by over 200,000 global customers, at least 18,000 computer systems in the U.S. U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency [CISA], a division of Homeland Security, determined that SolarWinds software had been hacked by Russia’s Foreign Intelligence [SVR] agency. Putin claims that the U.S. is still angry over unproved claims the Russia’s FSB hacked into U.S. computer systems in the 2016 presidential election. Whatever Russia did to interfere with the 2020 presidential election, the media and Democrats had no problem with the outcome of 78-year-old President-elect Joe Biden winning the election. “It’s revenge and an attempt to influence public opinion in our country to try to interfere with our domestic politics,” Putin said of the CIA.
Putin hasn’t begun to deal with the cybesecurity breach that links Russia’s SVR to the latest string of cyber hacks into classified, highly encrypted computers systems in government and private industry. “We can confirm there has been a breach in one our bureaus,” said the Commerce Department. “We have been working closely with our agency partners regarding recently discovered activity on government networks,” said National Security Council [NSC] spokesman John Ulyot. While Russia denies any involvement, NSC officials say Russian has its fingerprints all over the recent cybersecurity breach of major government and military computer systems. NSC officials said the all agencies should disconnect from SolarWinds Orion products because they’ve been compromised by foreign actors. SolarWinds has contracts in the government, military and private sector.
SolarWinds has widespread government and military contracts, running through U.S. intelligence agencies computer systems. “The compromise of SolarWinds Orion Network Products poses unacceptable risks to the security of federal networks,” said CISA’s Acting Director Brandon Wales. Russian officials denied any involvement in the cyberattack on U.S. government, military and intelligence computers systems. “I want to remind you that it was President [Vladimir] Putin who proposed that the American side agree and conclude agreements [with Russia] on cybersecurity,” said Krelin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Microsoft’s top cybersecurity experts said the breach was not from private actors but a Nation-state. “We believe this is nation-state activity at a significant scale, aimed at both the government and the private sector,” attesting to the widespread nature of the security breach.
Whether it’s poisoning opposition figure or hacking into Western security systems, Russia’s FSB and SVR intelligence services work 24/7 to access classified information either for global piracy or to breach U.S. national security. President-elect Biden will have his hands full dealing with Putin when he takes office Jan. 20, 2021. “If there have been attacks for many months, and the Americans could not do anything about it, it is probably no worth immediately, groundlessly blaming the Russians. We didn’t have anything to do with it,” Peskov s said. If Pescov’s right, then some global criminal entity not aligned with Russia is responsible for the recent hacks. Problems with Russia today is that U.S.-Russian relations, as Peskov says, are not working together to stop global cybersecurity crime. FireEye cybersecurity company said last week that Russian actors stole “key tools” to test computer vulnerability.
