Spy chief denies Russia was behind hack of US firm SolarWinds

Sergei Naryshkin said he was ‘flattered’ by the accusations from the US and Britain that Russia’s foreign intelligence was behind the cyberattack

The hack of SolarWinds in December gave access to thousands of companies and government offices that used its products

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Russian spy chief Sergei Naryshkin. Photo: Reuters

Published: 5:39pm, 18 May 2021Updated: 5:39pm, 18 May 2021

Russia’s spy chief on Tuesday denied responsibility for the SolarWinds cyberattack but said he was “flattered” by the accusations from the United States and Britain that Moscow’s foreign intelligence was behind such a sophisticated hack.

Washington and London have blamed Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), successor to the foreign spying operations of the KGB, for the hack which compromised nine US federal agencies and hundreds of private sector companies.

“These claims are like a bad detective novel,” SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin, a close ally of Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, told the BBC in Russian.

Asked directly if the SVR was responsible for the SolarWinds attack, Naryshkin quipped with a smile that he would be “flattered” if the SVR had been responsible for such a sophisticated attack but that he could not “claim the creative achievements of others as his own”.

Naryshkin said he did not want to accuse the US of being behind the attack but quoted from documents leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to suggest that the tactics of the attack were similar to those used by American and British intelligence agencies.