MOSCOW (Dispatches) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov on Wednesday refuted reports about Moscow being linked to the “hacking” of Republican Party servers, saying that the U.S. continues to make up tall tales about Russia-related cyberattacks.
Speaking to reporters, he referred to “many in the U.S. who don’t want any normalization of relations” between Moscow and Washington, RIA Novosti reported.
“Therefore, all sorts of fables are invented, and all kinds of groundless stories are told. Although no reasons for the appearance of such stories exist, all this continues”, Ryabkov added.
According to him, because the authors of such materials “lack imagination”, they “have to” use “recyclable materials” in the form of “these tall tales about certain Russian hackers”.
Earlier, the Russian Embassy in the US rejected reports about the breach of the US Republican National Committee (RNC) by “Russian government hackers”.
The incident was also later denied by an RNC spokesperson.
The developments come after the news outlet Bloomberg reported that the hack attack on the RNC was perpetrated by “APT29” or “Cozy Bear”, a hacker group US intelligence claims is linked to the Russian government, despite denials from Moscow of any ties to the group.
The breach coincided with a massive attack on dozens of U.S. organizations on July 3 by a hacking group called REvil, a cybercrime syndicate with a reputation for ransomware attacks.
The hack, which targeted more than 200 companies that use Kaseya VSA, an IT management tool, used ransomware to demand $70 million in Bitcoin, according to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Cybercrime-related issues were high on the agenda of a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden in Geneva on June 16.
The summit was preceded by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan clarifying Biden’s earlier statement about Putin’s proposal to exchange cyber criminals.
Sullivan explained that Biden did not talk about handing over or exchanging hackers with Russia, but instead emphasised accountability.