MOSCOW, October 22. /TASS/. The US indictment against Russian citizens on hacking charges and the UK Foreign Office claims that Russian special services tried to use cyber attacks to disrupt the Tokyo Olympics are unfounded, spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova told a briefing Thursday.
"While the entire rational international community is trying to establish constructive cooperation in the sphere of international information security and to find ways to overcome the cyberpandemic, certain states continue to advance a policy of unsubstantiated accusations that Russia is carrying out wrongful actions in the information sphere. This is precisely the way we view the indictment against Russian citizens on hacking charges by US authorities. These accusations were made public, [just as] the claims published on the UK Foreign Office’s website on October 19 that Russian special services used cyber attacks to disrupt the upcoming Tokyo Olympics," she said.
"I would not be surprised at all if later we saw a version of events that said this Olympics was also postponed because of the Russian hackers’ actions," she sneered.
The diplomat also underlined that Moscow’s repeated proposals to hold an expert meeting to discuss the existing problems and complaints are left unanswered amid the constant accusations from the West about the actions of certain "omnipotent Russian hackers."
UK accusations
The Foreign Office and the British National Cyber Security Center earlier claimed that Russian hackers from the Russian Main Directorate of the General Staff carried out a "cyber-reconnaissance" operation aimed against organizers of the Tokyo Olympics, their sponsors and logistics companies. It was allegedly made to disable computer systems to disrupt the sports events.
The Tokyo Olympics were originally supposed to be held between July 24 and August 9, 2020 but had to be rescheduled by a year due to the pandemic. They will now take place between July 23 and August 8, 2021.
On Monday, the US Justice Department indicted six Russians as accomplices in high-profile cyber attacks around the world. Washington claims that they are former and current officers of the Russian military intelligence.