MOSCOW -- Reports that someone in Russia stole information from US military computers do not prove a Kremlin cyber-spy ring has been uncovered, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service said Thursday.
Michael Vatis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday the FBI thought computer hackers located in Russia had filched sensitive information from US military networks.
Vatis was disclosing a probe, Moonlight Maze, under way for more than a year, which has been tracking what he called "a series of widespread intrusions into Defense Department, other federal government agencies, and private sector computer networks."
But Boris Labusov, spokesman for Russia's SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, said Russian spies would probably have been clever enough not to allow themselves to be traced. "As I understand, apparently they determined the route of the infiltrations, and the requests came from Moscow," he said.
"Do you think Russian special services are so stupid as to engage in such activities directly from Moscow?" said Labusov. "For decades, everybody has written about how clever the KGB and Soviet intelligence are. Why should one think we suddenly became less clever in the last few years?"
He said the culprits could have been amateur computer hackers seeking thrills, or even intelligence agents from a third country acting out of Moscow to avoid detection. "A Web server is a public service. Anybody can connect."
An American official had said suspects in the case were thought to come from the 275-year-old Academy of Sciences, Russia's top scientific research body, which groups thousands of senior scientists at institutes and universities across the country in virtually all fields.
The academy denies any involvement.
"[Reports of intrusions] could be true: there is such a profession -- people who sneak into computer systems," academy spokesman Igor Milovidov told Reuters. "But we don't take part in that. That is complete gibberish."
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited.
