RTFri, 14 May 2021 11:29 UTC
© Reuters/Drone BaseColonial Pipeline's Dorsey Junction Station in Woodbine, Maryland, USA
May 10, 2021
A cyberattack that crippled fuel supplies on the East Coast of the US and sent gas prices soaring could have been an inside job conducted by American spooks, rather than foreign hackers, a prominent Russian IT expert has claimed.
After a massive systems failure caused the Colonial Pipeline to shut down,
Natalya Kaspersky, the founder and former CEO of security software firm Kaspersky Lab, as well as one of Russia's wealthiest women, made the explosive suggestions in an interview with RIA Novosti on Friday.
She alleges that the US' top foreign intelligence agency, the CIA, has a crack team of digital warriors who are able to masquerade as overseas hacking groups.According to her, the group, known as
UMBRAGE, is adept at hiding its online footprints. The existence of the team first came to light in a series of documents published by
WikiLeaks in 2017 and subsequently picked up by American media. At the time,
USA Today said that the shadowy operatives
"may have been cataloguing hacking methods from outside hackers, including in Russia, that would have allowed the agency to mask their identity by employing the method during espionage."
On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that the devastating blow to America's infrastructure had been dealt from abroad:
"We do not believe the Russian government was involved in this attack, but we do have strong reason to believe that the criminals who did the attack are living in Russia, that's where it came from."
However, Kaspersky pointed out
the list
"of the countries under whose hacker groups this UMBRAGE is disguised - Russia, North Korea, China, Iran. Therefore, it cannot be said with certainty that the attack was carried out by a hacker group from Russia, and that it was not a provocation made themselves from there, or from some other country."
The day before, the operators of the Colonial Pipeline said that service had resumed, and that
"we can now report that we have restarted our entire pipeline system and that product delivery has commenced to all markets we serve." However, they added, it could take several days before gas supply issues were fully resolved.
Comment: Asked a direct question, Biden deferred assessment to the FBI:
Asked directly if he was confident Russian President Vladimir Putin was not involved, Biden emphasized that the FBI did not believe Putin was involved. Biden said he would likely discuss the attack with Putin at some point.
"We are working to try to get to the place where we have an international standard that governments knowing that criminal activities are happening in their territory, that we all move on those criminal enterprises, and I expect that is one of the topics I will be talking about with President Putin."
The Biden administration has been forced by the Colonial Pipeline and SolarWinds attacks, among other escalating cyber threats, to take immediate action to strengthen federal cybersecurity.
As part of this, Biden signed an executive order Wednesday night to take a range of actions to make it more difficult for hackers to successfully compromise federal agencies. The order requires the establishment of baseline security standards for all software sold to the government, and that IT groups doing business with the federal government report breaches.
Additionally, the administration launched a 100-day initiative in April to secure the electric sector against cyberattacks, with initiatives also planned to secure other critical sectors including the oil and gas industry.
"Private entities are in charge of their own cybersecurity," Biden said Thursday. "We know what they need, they need greater private sector investment in cybersecurity."
To further promote cybersecurity, Biden called on the Senate to vote on and approve the nominations of former National Security Agency Deputy Director Chris Inglis to serve as national cyber director at the White House, and of Jen Easterly to serve as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Additionally, he stressed the importance of passing his infrastructure package to strengthen critical systems against attacks, and for Congress to take action to help the private sector defend itself.
"I cannot dictate that the private companies do certain things relative to cybersecurity. I think it's becoming clear to everyone that we have to do more than is being done now, and the federal government can be significant value-added in having that happen."
Was this a false flag? Was it a trial run? Was Colonial Pipeline used as an excuse to leverage more control? All have been done in the past for 'other than stated reasons' counting on naive citizen and business reaction. Considering the track record, skeptics may have a point.
Comment: Asked a direct question, Biden deferred assessment to the FBI: Was this a false flag? Was it a trial run? Was Colonial Pipeline used as an excuse to leverage more control? All have been done in the past for 'other than stated reasons' counting on naive citizen and business reaction. Considering the track record, skeptics may have a point.