MOSCOW. Feb 7 (Interfax) - Around 200,000 cyberattacks on Russian information infrastructure were recorded in 2023, head of the Russian Security Council's information security department Alexei Petrov said at the Infoforum 2024 national information security forum on Wednesday.
"The Internet has turned from a safe environment for sovereign states' economic development into an arena of geopolitical confrontation. As a result, we have witnessed the changing scale and nature of information threats in recent years. In 2023 alone, there were about 200,000 highly dangerous cyberattacks on Russian information infrastructure. Most of these attacks are organized by foreign security services with the involvement of the international criminal community," Petrov said.
"The current situation in the information space is characterized by a global standoff between Western countries and Russia, as well as countries defending their information sovereignty," he said.
"We can see at the same time that the annual report of the United States' NSA [National Security Agency] designates Russia as a threat to regional security and global stability and calls Ukraine a key priority of the NSA," Petrov said.
"The head of NSA Cyber Command told Sky News in July 2022 that U.S. military hackers launched cyberattacks on Russia to support Ukraine. So, we can say that the masks have come off. I won't cite the admissions by the Western community, there have been plenty of them," he said.