Washington Acknowledges No Major Cyberattacks from Russia

Houston, March 10 – Gene Easterly, head of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection Agency (CISA), acknowledged that there were no serious attacks against US infrastructure from Russia.

“We have not seen major attacks on our infrastructure,” she said at the CERAWeek International Energy Conference in Houston, Texas, referring to possible Russian cyberattacks.

At the same time, assessing the threat from Moscow, the head of the CISA compared the Russian Federation with a “hurricane”. However, according to Easterly, the lack of major attacks is allegedly due to the fact that Russia could view potential cyberattacks on critical US infrastructure as a pretext to escalate relations between Moscow and Washington.

She concluded, “So I think it was a good decision to abstain.”

Earlier, the Russian ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said that Russia was exposed to unprecedented foreign cyber attacks last year, and it repelled about 50,000 such attacks, “most of which were carried out from American territory.” Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, said earlier that accusing Russia of hacking is a favorite pastime all over the world. The Russian authorities have repeatedly denied their involvement in cyberattacks and hacking activities, and have expressed their willingness to cooperate in combating hackers and engage in dialogue on cybersecurity.