MOSCOW, May 28. /TASS/. The Kremlin has no information on the Nobelium group’s cyber attacks against US government agencies, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. He described the related allegations as abstract and noted that they were unlikely to affect the upcoming meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Joe Biden of the United States.
"That’s such an abstract statement, it’s like saying that we think that a major threat comes from Microsoft and [its] software, that would be the same unsubstantiated accusation, it would be the same baseless allegation," the Kremlin spokesman noted. "When asked if those allegations would affect the Russia-US summit set to take place in Geneva on June 16, Peskov said: "No, we don’t think they will."
Touching upon whether Microsoft’s allegations could further raise tensions between Moscow and Washington ahead of the summit, the press secretary pointed out that "to answer this question, one needs to figure out what [hacking] groups these are, why they are associated with Russia, what targets were attacked and by whom, what the result was, and how Microsoft learned about it," he specified.
"We don’t have such information, this is what Microsoft is saying so it is up to Microsoft to clarify these things," the Kremlin spokesman emphasized.
Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said earlier in a blog post that "this week we observed cyber attacks by the threat actor Nobelium targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations." According to him, "Nobelium, originating from Russia, is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020.".