President's Representative: Claims of Russian Cyberattack on OSCE Website Absurd

llegations of Russian cyberattacks on the website of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) are absurd, as Russia is making efforts to protect the organization from various attacks, the Russian presidents representative said Wednesday.

VIENNA (Sputnik) – President's special representative for international cooperation in the field of information security Andrey Krutskikh stated that Moscow has come up with a number of initiatives to strengthen OSCE's cybersecurity, so it is illogical to blame the attacks against the organization on Russian hackers.

He pointed out that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had proposed a plan aimed at preventing incidents in the security sphere during a session of the OSCE Ministerial Council that took place in Germany’s Hamburg in December 2016.

“There were a number of proposals to strengthen OSCE in this sphere. So why are we strengthening OSCE in order to undermine it with our hackers? That is absurd!” Krutskikh said.

He also noted that there was no evidence of Russian involvement in the cyberattacks presented.

In December, the French newspaper Le Monde reported that the OSCE had been hit by a cyberattack. The newspaper, citing an unnamed western security service, said that the Fancy Bears hacker group, allegedly linked to Moscow, was behind the attack.

The issue of hacking attacks against government networks in different countries has come under the spotlight in recent months after a number of US and German officials claimed that hacking attacking targets in these countries, such as the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) or the infrastructure of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have been allegedly linked to Russia.