British Foreign Office summons Russian ambassador over hacker attacks
Kyiv • UNN
The United Kingdom imposed sanctions and summoned the Russian ambassador after the revelation of Russian intelligence cyberattacks on high-level British targets. The Russian attacks were aimed at interfering in British politics, but failed.
The UK exposed a series of attempts by Russian intelligence services to conduct cyberattacks on the public sector and organizations in the country. In response, the British Foreign Office imposed sanctions on those involved in the attacks and summoned the Russian ambassador. This was reported by UNN with reference to the press service of the British government.
Details
Today (December 7), the United Kingdom and its allies exposed a series of attempts by Russian intelligence services to attack high-ranking individuals and organizations through cyber operations. The UK government believes that this was done with the intention of using the information to interfere with the UK's politics and democratic processes
In Britain, the Russian FSB intelligence unit Center 18 was identified as responsible for a number of cyberespionage operations.
The cyberattacks were carried out by the Star Blizzard group, which, according to the UK, is almost certainly subordinate to Center 18 of the Russian FSB.
Although some of the attacks resulted in leaked documents, the attempts to interfere with UK politics and democracy were not successful, the government
In particular, the UK has established that the FSB, through the activities carried out by Star Blizzard, was involved in the hacking of trade documents between the UK and the US, which were leaked before the 2019 general election.
Following an investigation by the National Crime Agency, the UK has today imposed sanctions on Star Blizzard members for their involvement in the preparation of hacking attacks that led to unauthorized access and leakage of confidential data. One of them is an active intelligence officer of the FSB.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has also summoned the Russian ambassador to express the UK's deep concern about Russia's continued attempts to use cyberspace to interfere with political and democratic processes in the UK and beyond
Addendum
The day before, the UK expanded sanctions against Russia to include companies from Belarus, China, Serbia, Turkey, the UAE and Uzbekistan, as well as Russian arms manufacturers and organizations associated with the Wagner Group.
