Us? Pwn SolarWinds? With our reputation? Russian spy chief makes laughable denial of supply chain attack
- Reference: 1621359737
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/05/18/russian_spymaster_solarwinds/
- Source link:
Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR spy agency, made his denial in a BBC [2]interview broadcast on Tuesday.
"I'd be flattered to hear such an assessment of the work of the Foreign Intelligence service which I run. Such a high evaluation," said the spymaster in remarks translated by the BBC. The SolarWinds supply chain attack [3]saw US and UK government institutions probed by [4]Russian spies , as well as FireEye – itself a major US cybersecurity contractor.
[5]
[6]
[7]
"But I don't have the right to claim the creative achievements of others as my own," continued the SVR chief. As for whodunnit, he was less equivocal. When asked who carried out the SolarWinds attack, Naryshkin had an answer: the US and Britain.
After all, what proof was there that he and his spy agency were to blame? "There is none at least, none that has been made public. Have you seen proof?" he asked his BBC interviewer, who maintained a poker face.
"No, neither have I," said the spymaster. "At the same time we looked into who might be behind all of this."
[8]
Naryshkin then read aloud from a typed document, prepared with a noticeably large font size, and claimed that the Snowden revelations "proved" the US and UK were to blame [9]because American spies deliberately weakened a default random number generation algorithm used in RSA products about a decade ago.
Divide and conquer
Nonetheless, the SVR chief's move is not without precedent. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet Russia was well practised in two disciplines of military thought known as dezinformatsiya and maskirovka . Neither term translates well into English but one was about spreading false information among its enemies for political or socially disruptive gains and the other focused on battlefield deception.
These two broad concepts were briefly combined by policy wonks in the free world into something (misleadingly) called the Gerasimov Doctrine in the early 2010s, a term the US academic who coined it [10]now hates – while grudgingly conceding that the spreading of disinformation in an effort to break down the West's trust in state institutions is Russia's aim in itself, even if the whole idea wasn't plucked out of thin air by one general as the term suggests.
[11]SolarWinds CEO describes overhauled Orion build system after that 'very small, unique' security breach
[12]Here's what Russia's SVR spy agency does when it breaks into your network, says US CISA infosec agency
[13]Who knew Uncle Sam had strike teams for SolarWinds, Exchange flaws? Well, anyway, they are disbanded
[14]It was Russia wot did it: SolarWinds hack was done by Kremlin's APT29 crew, say UK and US
As Stanford Internet Observatory's research manager Renee DiResta explained at [15]last year's Black Hat conference : "Russia simply wants to divide people along existing social fissures, so they only have to reaffirm what their targets already believe."
"Russians are not trying to tell a story," explained DiResta in her 2020 talk, "They are simply dividing the population of the adversary."
So Sergey Naryshkin sat in front of the BBC's cameras and declared that the SVR didn't carry out the SolarWinds attacks, despite clear evidence presented by the global cybersecurity industry and the US and UK governments. It's not about making a truthful statement, it's about making the West doubt itself.
Not only the West: Russian-headquartered Kaspersky Lab [16]made tentative findings after the SolarWinds attack that the Turla malware crew, which is thought to have links to SVR sister agency the FSB, might have been involved. On top of that, FireEye itself made public [17]some of Russia cyber unit's tactics, techniques, and procedures , a move [18]echoed post-attribution by the UK's National Cyber Security Centre. ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/china_russia_disinformation_black_hat/
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-57144297
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/15/solarwinds_hack_russia_apt29_positive_technologies_sanctions/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/15/solarwinds_hack_russia_apt29_positive_technologies_sanctions/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YKQ49@4O1miRcRxhYjDMQAAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YKQ49@4O1miRcRxhYjDMQAAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YKQ49@4O1miRcRxhYjDMQAAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YKQ49@4O1miRcRxhYjDMQAAAAM0&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2013/09/23/rsa_crypto_warning/
[10] https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/05/im-sorry-for-creating-the-gerasimov-doctrine/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/11/solarwinds_ceo_orion_build_system/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/27/apt29_russia_svr_tactics_cisa/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/19/federal_solarwinds_investigation/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/15/solarwinds_hack_russia_apt29_positive_technologies_sanctions/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/06/china_russia_disinformation_black_hat/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/12/solarwinds_russia_kaspersky/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/19/fireeye_solarwinds_code/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/ncsc_russia_vulns_smart_cities_china_warning/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
To quote Mandy Rice-Davies
"Well, he would, wouldn't he?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandy_Rice-Davies
To admit to having hacked into US computer systems would be to effectively admit to having committed an act of war. The USA and the UK, and, in fact no country around would ever admit to hacking into another country's computer systems.
Trust is not, unfortunately, binary
I would love it if were as simple as [1]Martin Gardner’s Two Tribes : one side always tells the truth, the other always lies.
Reality is more complicated. Even our side lies, I would like to believe that they lie less that the others. It is not just Boris & Trump, but also our security services, various other agencies and what the press says. Sometimes it is to gain advantage over the other lot, sometimes to cover up their blunders & incompetence.
I probably over optimistically flatter myself that, with a bit of work, I can see what is true & what is false.
I'm talking above about politics, those at corporations also lie as well.
[1] https://blogs.ams.org/mathgradblog/2013/09/06/gardners-tribes/
So, it's not the Russkies because of something the NSA did a decade ago
Yeah. Perfectly logical argument there. Nothing to say to that, apparently.
But, by that logic, it's the Russkies because [1]Klaus Fuchs gave Soviet Russia all the data on atomic bombs they needed to make one, sparing them years of research and tons of money.
Checkmate.
Come on Naryshkin, you bloody well know that the information not made public does not exonerate you.
We're not talking about Huawei motherboards, we're talking about high-level spy stuff. The US is not going to say how it knows because that's classified.
Huawei motherboards are not classified. They are available to the public. If any one of them had indeed been suspiciously modified, we'd have a pic by now.
We don't, so that's bullshit.
You, however, have no such validation. You're just spreading bullshit as well.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs
Snowden merely confirmed what we already suspected/knew
SolarWinds wasn't a hack, it was careless software engineering that allowed opportunists to insert code into repositories that were assumed secure but were anything but. Its an embarrassing incident but not a particularly sophisticated one. As for who did it, our only grounds for saying "It was the Russians" is that we currently don't like them and as the SVR fellow pointed out the attack could have been done by anyone, including the NSA.
I have faith that state actors are a bit more sophisticated than to take full advantage of an obvious oversight. If nothing else they'd suspect a trap -- if its too easy there must be a catch. They'd also want something that's both subtle and deniable. So it doesn't come as a surprise that the recommended random number generation algorithm isn't that random or that the recommended parameters for an elliptic curve algorithm turn out to be ones that are surprisingly weak. This is the kind of intellectual arms race that I'd associate with three letter agencies and their Russian equivalents.
Have you seen proof?
I believe him! He's an HONEST spy chief, unlike those evil, cheating, devious, underhand spy masters the evil, cheating, devious, underhand Western Imperialist government employ on a daily basis!
p.s. our Soviet... our Russian authorities have just announced the two arch-enemies of the State of the peace-loving Russia: the US of A, and their little Satan puppet friend, Czech Republic! Long live the Comrade-President Putin! Long live Victorious Russia! Death to America and their little Satan-puppet henchmen, Czech or otherwise!
From the same playbook
[1]Salisbury novichok suspects say they were only visiting cathedral
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/13/russian-television-channel-rt-says-it-is-to-air-interview-with-skripal-salisbury-attack-suspects