Russia Rejects Media Allegations Of Being Behind Ransomware Attack On US Pipeline -Embassy

Ussia rejects "the baseless fabrications of individual journalists" about Moscow's involvement in last week's ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, one of the US' largest pipeline operators, the Russian Embassy in Washington wrote on Tuesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th May, 2021) Russia rejects "the baseless fabrications of individual journalists" about Moscow's involvement in last week's ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline company, one of the US' largest pipeline operators, the Russian Embassy in Washington wrote on Tuesday.

On Monday, the FBI confirmed that DarkSide ransomware was responsible for the incident. According to media reports, the DarkSide hackers are a group of Russian cyber criminals. President Joe Biden cited intelligence data as saying that there was no evidence Russia was behind the attack, but "the actor's ransomware is in Russia."�

"The Embassy took note of the attempts of some media to accuse Russia of a cyber-attack on Colonial Pipeline. At the same time, the US authorities blame the accident on the DarkSide criminal group and do not attribute it to any particular countries. We categorically reject the baseless fabrications of individual journalists and reiterate that Russia does not conduct 'malicious' activity in the virtual space," the embassy wrote on Facebook.

The embassy also reiterated that Moscow is striving for a professional dialogue with Washington on international information security issues, recalling a comprehensive program of measures to restore Russian-US cooperation in the field, proposed by President Vladimir Putin last September.

"Among other things, it proposed to maintain the continuous and effective functioning of the communication channels between competent agencies of our countries. In May 2020, the Embassy advised that the American side can directly contact the Russian National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents," the embassy recalled, noting that no requests for assistance from the US side have been received so far.

The ransomware attack last week prompted the US pipeline giant to temporarily halt all pipeline operations and take some systems offline to contain the threat from a cyberattack. The Department of Energy was tasked with leading the Federal investigation.