U.S. Cyber Command. U.S. Air Force/Technical Sgt. Cecilio Ricardo
On December 11, Nikolai Murashov, deputy director of Russia’s National Cyberthreat Response Centre, accused the US, the UK, and the EU with hampering efforts to introduce an international ban on the creation of malicious software.
He added that statistics on the geographical distribution of cyberattacks between 2016 and 2017 show that the US and the EU are global hotspots from which cyber attacks are carried out.
“This data makes it clear that according to these companies the United States and the European Union are the main sources of malicious activity,” he said quoting research compiled by Symantec and Webroot in the US, Japan’s NTT Security, and China’s CNCERT/CC cybersecurity centers between 2016 and 2017
He added that the US has in fact “unilaterally blocked” the functioning of mechanisms on cooperation with Russia in ensuring security in the fields of information and communication technologies, despite a 2013 agreement on the joint tackling of threats in this sphere. Murashov continued by saying that Russia is ready to “resume constructive dialogue” in this sphere, pending that it is based on “open and equal cooperation.”
“Almost everywhere [else], there is no ban on the development of similar software. Moreover, officials in the US, UK, and the EU do everything to hamper the approval of any recommendations on the criminalization of such activities at forums where global information security is discussed,” Murashov said.
According to National Cyberthreat Response Centre data, large cyberattacks involving the viruses WannaCry, NotPetya and BadRabbit affected users in nearly 100 countries in 2017, infecting over 500,000 computers, more than 60 percent of them in Russia. According to Murashov, these attacks, using advanced encryption methods, affected not only ordinary users, but components of Russia’s information infrastructure as well.
He further claimed that foreign intelligence agencies stood behind the cyberattacks which affected Russian cyber-infrastructure on the day of the ‘Direct Line With Vladimir Putin’ program in 2017, as well as voting day in presidential elections in March.
This relates to the real story on Huawei’s CFO being arrested in Canada. The extradition warrants date back to a Reuters story in 2013 accusing Huawei of owning a company that sold phone equipment to Iran in violation of US an UN sanctions. Mrs Wanzhou was enroute to the G 20 dinner. An other invited guest was Chinese physicist Soucheng Zhang from Stanford University. He died the same day she was arrested Dec. 1st, he fell from his high rise apt., reported as a suicide by police. Snowden recently reported that 5 eyes is ‘unhappy’ with Huawei’s encription being too hard to hack and has no ‘back doors’.
More info on Huawei being hard to crack. Why? Aren’t the same platforms and application used on Huawei or are you referring to Encrypting the hard-drive of the phone itself etc?
All I have other than the above is this: “The latest Snowden revelations showed last week, the spy agency NSA hacked Huawei as part of an operation launched in 2007. The plan involved stealing source code for some of Huawei’s products in the hope of finding vulnerabilities. Such source codes could allow NSA to exploit the products and spy on countries where Huawei equipment is used”. “In other words, the countries that use Huawei equipment can not be spied upon by the US because of its elaborate or superior encription”. Snowden’s complete revelations I have yet to find, so can offer no source. But with this additional information,( especially Zhang’s death), it is understandable how the Chinese would perceive the death of one vip and the arrest of another as kidnapping and extortion. An “Act of War’, but disguised as ‘just another criminal prosecution’. Altogether it looks like an attempt to force Huawei to allow 5 eyes a ‘back door’ or their hostage might encounter unfortunate circumstances.
Thanks Ronald.