DISINFO: No conclusive evidence of Russia's involvement in SolarWinds hacking
SUMMARY
Experts investigating the piracy of SolarWinds computers have concluded that the cyber criminals who committed this crime have succeeded in cleaning the crime scene completely, so that it is impossible for the investigators to determine who was behind it. If so, what are the reasons for blaming Russia in general and the Russian intelligence in particular?
We are back to vague expressions like the famous "highly likely" of former British Prime Minister Theresa May when she accused Russia of the alleged poisoning of double agent Sergey Skripal. Therefore, this is closer to the sick Western speculation and imaginations, than to the facts and concrete evidence.
RESPONSE
Pro-Kremlin disinformation denying any Russian involvement in the SolarWinds hacking in late 2020.
While it is always difficult to attribute responsibility in hacking attempts, multiple state-linked and independent researchers from all over the world have found evidence linking Russia to the SolarWinds hacking. The FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US all concluded that Russia was behind the cyber-espionage incident, as did the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) of the UK. On January 2021, cybersecurity experts from Kaspersky discovered that the hackers had deployed malicious computer code tied to a hacking group known as “Turla”, widely suspect of operating on behalf of Russia’s FSB security service. On 24 February 2021, Microsoft president and chief legal officer Brad Smith declared in a US Senate hearing that “substantial evidence” pointed to Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, and to have found “no evidence” leading them anywhere else. In the same hearing, FireEye CEO Kevin Mandia also pointed that forensics were “not very consistent with cyberespionage from China, North Korea or Iran” but “most consistent with cyberespionage and behaviors we've seen out of Russia”. Other cybersecurity researchers reached similar conclusions.
See a similar case that there is no evidence of Russian involvement in the SolarWinds hacking.
This disinformation message appeared in the same article as the claim that a NATO statement is blind support for the Nazi regime in Ukraine.