Tag Archives: cyber hacking

U.S. sanctions Russia for ‘malign’ acts, Moscow reacts angrily

By Trevor Hunnicutt, Arshad Mohammed and Andrew Osborn

WASHINGTON/MOSCOW (Reuters) -The United States on Thursday imposed a broad array of sanctions on Russia, including curbs to its sovereign debt market, to punish it for interfering in last year’s U.S. election, cyber-hacking, bullying Ukraine and other alleged “malign” actions.

The U.S. government blacklisted Russian companies, expelled Russian diplomats and barred U.S. banks from buying sovereign bonds from Russia’s central bank, national wealth fund and finance ministry. The United States warned Russia that more penalties were possible but said it did not want to escalate.

The Russian foreign ministry reacted angrily, summoning the U.S. ambassador for a diplomatic dressing-down to tell him “a series of retaliatory measures will follow soon.” A ministry spokeswoman also said a possible summit could be imperiled.

Russia denies meddling in U.S. elections, orchestrating a cyber hack that used U.S. tech company SolarWinds Corp to penetrate U.S. government networks and using a nerve agent to poison Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin to raise concerns about these issues and the build-up of Russian forces in Crimea and along the border with Ukraine, though a top U.S. general saw only a “low to medium” risk of a Russian invasion in the next few weeks.

Biden, who also proposed a U.S.-Russian summit, is trying to strike a balance between deterring what Washington sees as hostile Russian behavior while avoiding a deeper deterioration in U.S.-Russian ties and preserving some room for cooperation.

“Our objective here is not to escalate. Our objective here is to impose costs for what we feel are unacceptable actions by the Russian government,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.

Among his moves, Biden signed an executive order authorizing the U.S. government to sanction any area of the Russian economy and used it to restrict Russia’s ability to issue sovereign debt to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2020 U.S. election.

Biden barred U.S. financial institutions from taking part in the primary market for rouble-denominated Russian sovereign bonds from June 14. U.S. banks have been barred from taking part in the primary market for non-rouble sovereign bonds since 2019.

He did not, however, prohibit them from buying such debt in the secondary market, a step likely to have a far more dramatic effect on the Russian bond and currency markets, which fell as news of the sanctions seeped out before recovering some losses.

“The president signed this sweeping new authority to confront Russia’s continued and growing malign activity,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

The Treasury also blacklisted 32 entities and individuals that it said had carried out Russian government-directed attempts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election and other “acts of disinformation and interference.”

ANALYST: RUSSIA TO CONTINUE TESTING U.S.

In concert with the European Union, Britain, Australia and Canada, the Treasury also sanctioned eight individuals associated with Russia’s ongoing occupation and repression in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

The White House said it was expelling 10 Russian diplomats in Washington D.C., including representatives of the Russian intelligence services and for the first time, formally named the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as the perpetrator of the SolarWinds Corp hack. The agency said the allegations were “nonsense” and “windbaggery.”

The U.S. government plans a new executive order to strengthen its cybersecurity, a U.S. official told reporters, suggesting it could include such elements as encryption and multifactor authentication.

The White House also said it would respond to reports Russia had offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. However, it said it would not make its response public to protect U.S. forces, saying the matter would be handled via “diplomatic, military and intelligence channels.”

U.S. intelligence agencies have “low to moderate” confidence in their assessment of these reports, in part because they rely on sometimes undependable testimony from detainees, it said.

Russia has long brushed off allegations of putting bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

Andrew Weiss, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank analyst, was skeptical the U.S. sanctions would change a “largely competitive and adversarial relationship” in the short term or deter Russia in the long term.

“I’d be surprised if today’s very calibrated announcements by the Biden administration materially shift the relationship in either direction,” he said, saying Russia was willing to cooperate on some issues but there was unlikely ever to be a meeting of the minds on Ukraine or election interference.

“I don’t think it’s realistic to expect the new sanctions will shift Russia’s risk calculus in a fundamental fashion,” he added. “It’s to be expected that the Russians will keep probing and testing our resolve.”

(Reporting By Trevor Hunnicutt, Tim Ahmann, Doina Chiacu, Jeff Mason, Patricia Zengerle in Washington, by Arshad Mohammed in St. Paul, Minn. and by Andrew Osborn, Andrey Ostroukh and Tom Balmforth in Moscow; Writing by Arshad Mohammed, Editing by Angus MacSwan and Cynthia Osterman)

ATM makers warn of ‘jackpotting’ hacks on U.S. machines

: A man types on a computer keyboard in front of the displayed cyber code in this illustration picture taken on March 1, 2017.

By Jim Finkle

(Reuters) – Diebold Nixdorf Inc and NCR Corp, two of the world’s largest ATM makers, have warned that cyber criminals are targeting U.S. cash machines with tools that force them to spit out cash in hacking schemes known as “jackpotting.”

The two ATM makers did not identify any victims or say how much money had been lost. Jackpotting has been rising worldwide in recent years, though it is unclear how much cash has been stolen because victims and police often do not disclose details.

The attacks were reported earlier on Saturday by the security news website Krebs on Security, which said they had begun last year in Mexico.

The companies confirmed to Reuters on Saturday they had sent out the alerts to clients.

NCR said in a Friday alert that the cases were the first confirmed “jackpotting” losses in the United States. It said its equipment had not been targeted in the recent attacks, but that it was still a concern for the entire ATM industry.

“This should be treated by all ATM deployers as a call to action to take appropriate steps to protect their ATMs against these forms of attack,” the alert said.

Diebold Nixdorf said in a separate Friday alert that U.S. authorities had warned the company that hackers were targeting one of its ATM models, known as Opteva, which went out of production several years ago.

A confidential U.S. Secret Service alert sent to banks said the hackers targeted stand-alone ATMs typically located in pharmacies, big box retailers and drive-thru ATMs, Krebs on Security reported.

Diebold Nixdorf’s alert described steps that criminals had used to compromise ATMs. They include gaining physical access, replacing the hard drive and using an industrial endoscope to depress an internal button required to reset the device.

Reuters was unable to obtain a copy of the Secret Service report and an agency representative declined comment. Officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation could not immediately be reached.

Russian cyber security firm Group IB has reported that cyber criminals remotely attacked cash machines in more than a dozen countries across Europe in 2016. Similar attacks were also reported that year in Thailand and Taiwan.

(Reporting by Jim Finkle in Toronto; Additional reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington; Editing by Susan Thomas)

Putin says U.S. hacking scandal not in Russia’s interests

Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech during the annual VTB Capital "Russia Calling!" Investment Forum in Moscow, Russia,

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The scandal that erupted in the United States over allegations Russia hacked Democratic Party emails has not been in Moscow’s interests and both sides in the U.S. election campaign are just using Russia to score points, Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

The U.S. government on Friday formally accused Russia for the first time of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

And the White House said on Tuesday it would consider a variety of responses to the alleged hacks.

“They started this hysteria, saying that this (hacking) is in Russia’s interests. But this has nothing to do with Russia’s interests,” President Putin told a business forum in Moscow.

Putin said the accusations were a ploy to divert U.S. voters’ attention at a time when public opinion was being manipulated.

“Everyone is talking about ‘who did it’ (the hacking),” said Putin. “But is it that important? The most important thing is what is inside this information.”

The Kremlin said earlier on Wednesday it took a negative view of White House statements about a planned “proportional” response to the alleged cyber attacks.

Putin complained that all sides in the U.S. presidential race were misusing rhetoric about Russia for their own ends, but said Moscow would work with whoever won the election “if, of course, the new U.S. leader wishes to work with our country”.

“About a decade ago, they wouldn’t mention Russia at all, because it was not even worth talking about, such a third-rate regional power and not interesting at all. Now Russia is problem number one in the entire election campaign,” said Putin.

“All they do is keep talking about us. Of course it’s pleasant for us, but only partly because all participants are misusing anti-Russian rhetoric and poisoning our bilateral relations.”

(Reporting by Katya Golubkova and Alexander Winning; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Andrew Osborn)