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The Russian government has issued a security alert on Thursday evening warning Russian businesses of potential cyberattacks launched by the United States in response to the SolarWinds incident.
The Russian government’s response comes after comments made by the new Biden administration earlier in the day.
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Answering questions about their plans on the SolarWinds hack, new White House officials said they reserved the right to respond at a time and manner of their choosing to any cyberattack.
At first White House press briefing @PressSec says on SolarWinds breach: “we’ve spoken about this previously…of course we reserve the right to respond at a time and manner of our choosing to any cyberattack”
— Shannon Vavra (@shanvav) January 21, 2021
Moscow’s response to this comment came hours later in the form of a security bulletin published by the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents (NKTSKI), a security agency founded by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s internal security and intelligence agency.
The short statement cited the Biden administration’s comments, interpreted as threats, and provided a list of 15 security best practices that businesses should adhere to in order to remain safe online.
(Text translated with Google Translate)
The best practices included in the alert are run of the mill security advice and nothing that companies or even the lowest skilled security practitioner wasn’t aware of already.
The security alert was published more as a response to the Biden administration’s aggressive statements earlier in the day.
The White House’s comments follow a tone set two weeks ago when US officials from the FBI, CISA, ODNI, and NSA formally blamed Russia for orchestrating the wide-reaching SolarWinds supply chain attack.
Kremlin officials denied multiple times of having had any hand in the SolarWinds incident.
During yesterday’s press conference, the Biden administration also promised to commit $9 billion towards cybersecurity in the aftermath of the SolarWinds hack.
