White House blames Russia for NotPetya cyberattack

The United States has followed Britain in formally blaming Russia with launching the “NotPetya” cyberattack that wrecked havoc around the globe last summer.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued a statement Thursday afternoon attributing NotPetya to Moscow, echoing an announcement made hours earlier by the U.K. government.

“In June 2017, the Russian military launched the most destructive and costly cyberattack in history,” said Mrs. Sanders.

“The attack, dubbed ’NotPetya,’ quickly spread worldwide, causing billions of dollars in damage across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. It was part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine and demonstrates ever more clearly Russia’s involvement in the ongoing conflict,” said Mrs. Sanders.

The cyberattack was “reckless and indiscriminate,” she added, and “will be met with international consequences.”

Britain announced earlier Thursday that Russia was “almost certainly” responsible for the NotPetya attack, citing findings reached by the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre.

“We call upon Russia to be the responsible member of the international community it claims to be, rather then secretly trying to undermine it,” said Lord Tariq Ahmad, the U.K.’s foreign office minister for cybersecurity.

President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said the Kremlin categorically denies involvement and called the claims “unsubstantiated and groundless.”

“This is nothing but a continuation of a Russophobic campaign that is not based on any evidence,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier Thursday.

NotPetya successfully spread quickly from computer to computer by exploiting a Microsoft Windows vulnerability previously hoarded by the U.S. National Security Agency and leaked online last April by a hacking outfit known as Shadow Brokers.

The CIA has recently spent several months attempting to retried its cache of stole cyberweapons, The Intercept and The New York Times reported last week, and the agency recently spent $100,000 attempting to buy back compromised computer code, the latter reported.

NotPetya initially targeted Ukrainian computers before ultimately propagating abroad, infecting systems used by victims including American logistics firm FedEx, Dutch competitor Maersk and Russia’s Rosneft, among others, eventually causing hundreds of millions of dollars in related damages.