The Russian government has alerted businesses in the country about a potential cyber attack from the US, in retaliation of the SolarWinds hacking that compromised networks of several US federal agencies (including the Department of Defense) and top tech enterprises.
The suspected Russia-backed hackers have compromised at least 250 federal agencies and top enterprises in the US, by infiltrating into ‘SolarWinds Orion’ monitoring and management software.
In a press briefing at the White House on Friday, new White House officials said they reserved the right to respond.
“We’ve spoken about this previously… of course we reserve the right to respond at a time and manner of our choosing to any cyberattack,” the press secretary said.
Moscow’s response to the comment came in the form of a security bulletin published by the National Coordination Center for Computer Incidents (NKTSKI), a security agency founded by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), an internal security and intelligence agency.
“The short statement cited the Biden administration’s comments, interpreted as threats, and provided a list of 15 security best practices that businesses should adhere to in order to remain safe online,” reports ZDNet.
Russia has denied its hand in the SolarWinds incident.
The Biden administration has also committed $9 billion towards cybersecurity in the aftermath of the SolarWinds incident.
At least 24 big companies, including tech giants like Intel, Cisco, VMware and Nvidia, have reportedly suffered the ‘SolarWinds’ hack.
The suspected Russian hackers installed a malware in the Orion software sold by the IT management company ‘SolarWinds’, and accessed sensitive data belonging to several US government agencies and businesses.
The initial estimates were that Russian hackers compromised 18,000 government and private networks.
-IANS