reporter: i guess it s the timing of this alleged cyber attack that s the most striking. just a few weeks before the u.s. and russian presidents are set to meet in switzerland for a much-anticipated face-to-face summit that s already filled with a long list of disagreements between the two countries, between the two pets. russia s support for belarus in the latest crisis, its ordering down of an airline in order to arrest passengers on board. the treatment of alexei navalny, russia s opposition leader. the fresh hacking allegations to add to the historical ones that are already there. to make matters worse, it s only been a few weeks, really, since president biden imposed tough sanctions on russia for precisely this kind of cyber attack. the solar winds hack which was focused on u.s. government agencies and was blamed by washington on the svr, russia s foreign intelligence service. at microsoft, which detected the latest incidents of hacking of u.s. aid agencies, think tanks,
january of 2021. you know, this organization objective is to collect intelligence, right? they re after e-mails. they re after documents. they re after internal sources of information. a big objective of russian intelligence agencies is to collect information that can be used in information called active measures which are discrediting campaigns or smear campaigns or someone standing in the public eye. these are types of information that the russian svr would be going after. i think it s within the realm of what you would call normal or legitimate for a foreign intelligence agency to try to collect information from government organizations, from non-government organizations or quasigovernment supporting nonprofits. this does seem to be in line with the general expect az of what you would think the central
american federal agencies and companies. we think they came in through constant contact. some people have heard of it. it s a competitor of basically they got into constant contact and used to send the emails that appear to come from usaid to institutions like the atlantic council, eu disinfo group that both had been pretty active about calling out russian disinformation and campaigns and some of the pre-election interference that we were seeing. and so in this case it looks like this is the svr going after groups critical of russia or in some way, shape or form have triggered the ire of vladimir putin. yeah. to me what is striking about this story is at some level i suppose i expect that russian intelligence hackers are trying to get that the u.s. government
or on the other, you could see this as something like de-escalation in the sense that this was the sort of thing that the svr, the russian agency that we believe is behind it, used to do kind of a lot before solarwinds. we saw it all the time from them. it s what cyber defenders would expect. let s get into the politics of this as well, kevin. biden has side that russia s cyber aggression is going to be part of the conversation planned with putin next month when they meet in geneva. could this latest hack lead to even more sanctions, more consequences subsequently for russia? i think this is a very fine needle for biden to thread. for years, reaching back to the obama administration, before, there s always been a sort of tacit acceptance that it s okay for intelligence agencies to go just so far, hacking specific targets for espionage. the u.s. does it, china, russia, every country with decent cyber capabilities does it. solarwinds crossed a line for a
been a few weeks really since president biden imposed tough sanctions on russia for precisely this kind of cyberattack. the solarwinds hack targeting u.s.-government agencies and blamed by washington on the svr, russia s foreign-intelligence service. microsoft, which detected the latest hacking of usaid agencies, think tanks, and humanitarian groups, mainly in the u.s., said the same group of russian hackers are responsible, this time around. for its part, thny knowledge of espionage saying it has questions about why russia is, again, being blamed. matthew chance, cnn, moscow. there are new questions surrounding the origins of covid-19 as u.s. intel reignites a controversial theory surrounding a lab in wuhan, china. we will bring you what s next in the search for answers. stay with us.