Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Friday to break with foreign technologies to strengthen Russia’s defenses against computer attacks, while assuring that Moscow had stopped a serious “cyberattack”.
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“The digitization that is actively underway within Russian governance and economy…must be shielded as much as possible from any potentially negative action from outside,” Putin said.
“The obvious way to achieve this objective is to ensure the transition to national equipment, technologies, programs and products”, he continued, during a meeting of his Security Council.
Mr Putin said that Russia, engaged since February 24 in a military campaign in Ukraine, was facing an increasing number of computer attacks. According to him, the latter come from “different states” and are “finely coordinated”.
They target in particular the sites of Russian media, financial institutions, public services and official portals, noted Mr. Putin.
Most often, sites are blocked during these attacks or “fakes” are published on them, he claimed, also noting “really more and more frequent” attempts to break into “internal networks”. of Russian companies.
According to Mr. Poutine, Moscow, within the framework of the Western sanctions, also undergoes from now on “limitations to access to foreign computer technologies”. “A series of Western suppliers have stopped their technical support,” he pointed out.
“But, as of now, I can say that the cyberattack and the sanctions against Russia failed, on the whole we were prepared for it,” continued the Russian leader.
In recent years, Russian authorities have been developing a “sovereign internet” system that will eventually make it possible to isolate the Russian net by separating it from major global servers.
The Kremlin denies wanting to build a national network under control, as in China, but that is what NGOs and opponents fear.