Everyone is convinced that they are Russians, but no one has yet found the so-called smoking gun, that is to say certain proof that the latest devastating attacks are the work of this country’s hackers. And in the Kremlin they shrug, given that without certain elements, Biden can’t point his finger in that direction, after the words exchanged with Putin at the Geneva summit. Indeed, the latest cautious statements by the American president on the origin of the attacks suggest that, at least for now, nothing will happen.
The main clue that suggests a Russian operation is the fact that to be hit by the group identified as REvil they were never Russian entities or from countries that were once part of the USSR. It is also possible, Russian computer experts observe, that the criminal group is made up of citizens of former Soviet republics who are very familiar with the methods and powers of the various Russian secret services successors of the KGB. These outlaws certainly don’t want to be in conflict with the Russian 007s.
REvil’s latest operation against the Kaseya company, which then had effects on thousands of companies around the world (singular the case of the Swedish supermarket chain that saw all the checkouts blocked) was sophisticated. Those who work to thwart hacker activity think that REvil operates in parallel with the DarkSide group, which also avoids attacks on CIS countries, the Commonwealth of Independent States created after the dissolution of the USSR. The new hackers could also be members of the GandGrab gang which is now no longer active and with which many of the codes used seem to be shared.
The idea, of course, that all these groups were created by Russian secret services or entities close to the Kremlin. In particular, it is strongly suspected that some of the attacks unleashed in the past came from computer experts hired by friends of Putin. At the origin of the interference with the Democratic Party servers at the time of Donald Trump’s election, as well as those during the last election campaign, there could be the so-called St. Petersburg troll factory. An IT company that was allegedly created for this purpose by Evgenij Prigozhin, an entrepreneur known as Putin’s cook for his business in the restaurant business. The same character would be behind the creation of the Wagner group that sends mercenaries to fight in all the hotspots of the world where Russia has interests, from Libya to the Central African Republic.
The REvil which also known as Sodinokibi (but the word does not mean anything in Russian) it would have started operating as early as 2020 with ransom requests to various companies, including those of the then President Trump who would have asked for 42 million dollars. Many attacks unleashed this year, including those against large and experienced companies such as Acer, Microsoft and an Apple supplier.
July 5, 2021 (change July 5, 2021 | 07:57)
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