White House: Mer­ck and oth­ers hit by Not­Petya were col­lat­er­al dam­age in Rus­sia’s cy­ber­war on the Ukraine

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in the US and UK say they are now cer­tain they know who launched the Not­Petya cy­ber­war that slammed op­er­a­tions at Mer­ck and a num­ber of US com­pa­nies.

The Russ­ian mil­i­tary did it.

In a short but blunt state­ment on the White House home page, the gov­ern­ment says that the Rus­sians aimed Not­Petya at its op­po­nents in the Ukraine in a clear as­sault that quick­ly jumped na­tion­al bor­ders and ran amuck, caus­ing vast dam­age around the world. One of the com­pa­nies that was hard­est hit, at least par­tial­ly with the help of leaked NSA hack­ing tech, was Mer­ck.

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