MOSCOW, November 21. /TASS/. Hackers, including computer specialists from the United States, would have failed to hack the Kremlin’s vital information systems as these networks are physically separated from the Internet, Director of the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) Sergei Plugotarenko told TASS on Monday.
State information systems should be divided into two levels: external (in particular, media-related) and internal (critically important), the RAEC director said.
"Any vitally important state information systems can’t be hacked as they are physically separated from the external Internet," the expert said.
"One can only guess what internal systems the Kremlin has," Plugotarenko added.
According to the expert, external information systems are "a mold of internal networks made according to special rules."
"External media-related systems (the Internet) can be hacked despite any protection. There will always be a genius hacker or a group of hackers who will be able to do what the persons protecting these resources can’t do," he said.
The American TV broadcaster NBC earlier reported with reference to high-placed sources in the US intelligence community that military hackers from the United States had penetrated the computer networks controlling the power grid in Russia, telecommunications systems, and also the Kremlin’s networks.
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As the NBC reported, the Russian networks had become vulnerable to cyberattacks from the United States.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in comments on these reports that computer security in Russia was maintained at the level countering these threats. Russia’s Communications Minister Nikolai Nikiforov earlier told TASS that US hackers would hardly be able to break into the Kremlin’s IT infrastructure.
Before that, officials in the United States alleged on many occasions that some hackers working for the Russian government were attacking information systems of US departments and agencies or the election headquarters of presidential candidates and vowed to give a symmetrical response. Moscow considers these accusations as unfounded and deserving no attention.
The RAEC director said that such statements are only "a part of the election and post-election hysteria."
According to the expert, the dialog was outside the realm of communication among IT-specialists as this was more like a political discussion.
The Russian-IT expert said he had visited the United States in July-August and felt that the information field at that moment "had been quite unhealthy and absolutely biased."