Russia is ready to carry out cyberattacks on the UK and other allies to weaken Western support for Ukraine, according to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden. He will make this statement at a NATO conference next week, BBC reports, UNN reports.
Details
Pat McFadden, whose position includes responsibility for national security, is going to tell a NATO meeting that the Kremlin could attack British businesses and leave “millions of people without electricity.
According to him, Russia is capable of attacking British companies “to achieve its harmful goals.
Given the scale of this hostility, my message to the Security Council today is clear: no one should underestimate the Russian cyber threat to NATO. The threat is real
According to the BBC, he will say that hacker groups linked to Russia are responsible for at least nine separate cyberattacks on NATO countries, including unprovoked attacks on critical national infrastructure.
The group is believed to be behind the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018.
In the United Kingdom, a series of cyberattacks on several councils have been carried out in recent weeks, in some cases claimed by the pro-Russian hacker group Unit 29155.
In September, a joint defense briefing by Western intelligence agencies accused “unit 29155” of conducting attacks aimed at disrupting efforts to help Ukraine resist a full-scale Russian invasion.
In his speech, McFadden will tell the conference participants that many of these attacks are carried out by gangs of “unofficial hacktivists” with ties to the Kremlin, but they are allowed to “operate with impunity as long as they do not work against Putin's interests,” the BBC writes.