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Major Russian cyber attack could attack UK and US via govt networks

Published on: 18 Apr 2018

State-sponsored Russian hackers are believed to be readying a massive cyber assault on government and private sector organisations.

Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has issued a joint statement with the FBI and US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) highlighting possible malicious cyber activity carried out by the Russian government.

It warned that these cyber exploits are directed at network infrastructure devices, such as routers, switches, firewalls, and the Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS).

The statement claims that Russian state-sponsored actors are using compromised routers to conduct spoofing ‘man-in-the-middle’ attacks to support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks, and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations.

NCSC chief executive Ciaran Martin labelled Russia as Britain’s “most capable hostile adversary in cyber space” and added that tackling the country's threat was a major priority for his organisation.

“For over 20 years, GCHQ has been tracking the key Russian cyber attack groups and today’s joint UK-US alert shows that the threat has not gone away,” he commented. 

“The UK government will continue to work with the US, other international allies and industry partners to expose Russia’s unacceptable cyber behaviour, so they are held accountable for their actions.”

Anyone who finds signs of the malicious activity described in TA18-106A is encouraged to report this to the NCSC immediately.