The closure of the Swiss Attorney General's Office's investigation into Russia's alleged cyberattacks on Swiss state defense company RUAG should serve as a lesson to any party accusing Russia of being a cyberthreat, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th August, 2018) The closure of the Swiss Attorney General's Office's investigation into Russia's alleged cyberattacks on Swiss state defense company RUAG should serve as a lesson to any party accusing Russia of being a cyberthreat, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
The Attorney General's Office opened its investigation into alleged economic espionage carried out against RUAG, claiming that the first attack had taken place in December 2014 and originated from Russia. However, no official confirmation was found, and on Monday, Andre Marty, the spokesman for the Swiss prosecution office, said in a statement that the investigation was closed.
"We have taken note of the statement made by an official representative of the Swiss Confederation's Attorney General's Office on August 27 saying that the investigation into the cyberattacks that had allegedly targeted Swiss state arms conglomerate RUAG was closed due to, and I quote, 'the impossibility of identifying the perpetrators of the attack.' As we see it, the Swiss Attorney's General's Office has in fact proved the invalidity of the accusations toward Russia by this statement," Zakharova said at a press briefing.
The spokeswoman went on to say that any party accusing Russia of cyberattacks should draw their conclusions from the investigation's closure.
"I think this should serve as a good lesson for all those who circulate baseless pieces of information of a hacker threat that allegedly comes from Russia. We believe that only the development of a bilateral and multilateral expert dialogue on the issues related to international data security will allow for specific results in terms of both prevention of and investigation into such incidents," Zakharova said.
Zakharova's words came amid recent reports that the US Cyber Command and the US National Security Agency had created a special joint unit set to combat Russia's alleged cyberattacks. The establishment of the unit is a measure to prevent Russia's possible meddling into the US midterm elections, scheduled for November 2018.
The United States has repeatedly accused Russia of interfering in its 2016 presidential election, which Russia has firmly refuted.
