Ecuador does not believe that the Russian government was involved in cyberattacks that took place during the protests in the South American country, since a country's IP addresses were not indicative of its direct involvement in such attacks, Ecuadorian Ambassador to Russia Julio Prado Espinosa told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 12th December, 2019) Ecuador does not believe that the Russian government was involved in cyberattacks that took place during the protests in the South American country, since a country's IP addresses were not indicative of its direct involvement in such attacks, Ecuadorian Ambassador to Russia Julio Prado Espinosa told Sputnik.The protests in Ecuador erupted in October when the government issued a decree scrapping fuel subsidies, among other austerity measures. Ecuador's Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said shortly after the beginning of the unrest that the Prosecutor General's Office was investigating whether any foreign actors have been involved in it. She added that Russian IP addresses were used to post anti-government content on social networks.
"What I am saying is that we do not think these hackers can be linked to a particular government, because they are not accountable to anyone. These are people who are very proficient in IT; they want to cause harm, have influence, set one against the other. Minister [Romo] does not blame the Russian government in any way. The fact that an IP address pointing to a particular country has been detected does not mean that the state of that country supports them [hackers], and we cannot say that the Russian government is involved in this," Espinosa stated.
The ambassador added that Quito did not intend to appeal to Moscow on the issue of Russia's alleged involvement in the protests in the country.
On October 18, Aleksander Shchetinin, the director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Department of Latin America, said that if Ecuador had questions about Russia's alleged involvement in the unrest, it should ask Moscow directly.
