Rob Engelaar | AFP | Getty Images
A laptop displays a message after being infected by ransomware as part of a worldwide cyberattack on June 27, 2017.
NotPetya appeared in Ukraine last July and spread to Europe and the U.S., wreaking havoc on businesses including banks, shipping ports, law firms, transportation networks and government agencies in what’s been considered the costliest cyber attack in history.
In total, it affected more than 80 companies in Russia and Ukraine and is said to have caused billions of dollars in damage across three continents. The Kremlin, meanwhile, announced that it had not caused major damage in Russia.
“We saw an indiscriminate attack launched by Russia against Ukraine in the ongoing hostilities there. What they used was a cyber weapon that was launched in the dark, that hit numbers of companies, individuals, and caused damage to our economies, it stopped shipping from moving… it literally shut (companies) down,” Joyce said. “And that is unacceptable.”
The act was seen as a deliberate attack on Ukraine, which saw its National Bank and numerous businesses, airports and government agencies paralyzed. Russia invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, and continues to fuel fighting in the country’s east, where at least 10,000 people have since been killed. The Obama administration in 2014 imposed sanctions on Russia for its intervention.
Joyce’s comments follow a statement from the White House on Thursday in which it accused the the Russian military of launching the “reckless” attack as “part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine.” The statement, delivered by Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, represented a rare show of condemnation from the Trump administration, which has yet to fully endorse an assessment by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. election.
