By Elishya Perera
WASHINGTON DC (CWBN)_The United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Russia for what has been described as the worst case of cyberespionage in the history of America.
“We can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity,” the Secretary of State said in a radio interview with US talk show host Mark Levin on Friday (Dec 18).
President “Vladimir Putin remains a real risk”, as Russia attempts to “undermine our way of life”, Pompeo noted.
However, President Donald Trump downplayed the severity of the attack, and cast doubt on his own secretary of state’s comments.
“I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control,” the President said. “Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!).”
The intrusion came to light last week, after a prominent cybersecurity firm in California discovered that it had been breached and alerted that foreign governments and major enterprises had also been compromised.
The United States Department of Energy, the government agency concerned with the US’s policies regarding the handling of nuclear material, was among the government agencies targeted. However, the Department noted that the arsenal’s security had not been compromised.
While around 80 per cent of the customers targeted by the attackers are located in the US, victims from UK, Canada, Israel, Spain, Belgium, Mexico and the UAE were also identified.
Responding to the attack, US President-elect Joe Biden pledged to make cybersecurity a top priority of his administration.
“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyberattacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday. “We will do that by, among other things, imposing substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.”
