Trump downplays cyberattack and Russia’s supposed role

Trump downplays cyberattack and Russia’s supposed role
© Belga

President of the United States Donald Trump downplayed the massive cyber-attack launched last week against the United States and Russia’s supposed role in it, even though his own Foreign Minister said it had probably been initiated by Moscow.

"The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality," Trump said on Twitter. "I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)."

The US President, who has still not conceded his defeat at the 3 November presidential election, also repeated his baseless claim that the polls may have been affected by fraud, although he is yet to provide any evidence to back it up.

"There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA," he tweeted.

That tweet was immediately followed by a disclaimer from Twitter. “Election officials have certified Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. Presidential election,” it read.

Trump had remained silent for days on the massive cyberattack, in which the hackers succeeded in compromising the US company Solar Winds’ Orion software, used for managing and supervising the information systems of major businesses and administrations.

Estimates of the extent of the damage have continued to grow as more and more victims - government institutions and private companies in the United States and beyond - are being discovered, raising increasing fears of espionage. Information security experts all suspect Moscow, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo officially expressed this accusation on Friday.

"This was a very significant effort," Pompeo said, “and I think it's the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity."

Russia has strongly denied involvement in the affair. “Russia does not conduct offensive operations in the cyber domain,” the Russian Embassy in Washington declared early last week.

The Brussels Times


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