London (AFP)

The United Kingdom, the United States and Canada accused Russian intelligence services of being behind attacks by hackers on Thursday to take over research into a vaccine against the coronavirus, which was strongly denied the Kremlin.

This accusation comes in a dark sky between London and Moscow, where already hangs the shadow of suspicions of Russian interference in the British legislative campaigns of last December - which saw the triumph of the Conservatives of Prime Minister Boris Johnson - and the referendum of 2016 which resulted in Brexit.

Deeming "totally unacceptable that Russian intelligence services target those working to fight the coronavirus pandemic", British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab warned that those who carry out such attacks will sooner or later have to "be held to account" .

"While some are recklessly chasing their selfish interests, the UK and its allies are continuing their hard work to find a vaccine and protect global health," he said in a statement.

According to the British government agency responsible for cybersecurity, a group of Russian hackers have attacked British, Canadian and American organizations to steal their research into the development of a vaccine against SARS-CoV2.

"The threatening group known as APT29" or the "Dukes" or "Cozy Bear", "almost certainly operates within the framework of the Russian intelligence services", said in a statement this British organization, the National Cyber ​​Security Center (NCSC), and its Canadian counterpart, the Communications Security Establishment.

In a separate statement, their American counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), abounded in the accusations and declared that the APT29 "uses a variety of tools and techniques to target mainly government targets, diplomatic targets, think tanks, healthcare and energy for intelligence purposes. "

"We reject these accusations as do the new baseless allegations of interference in the 2019 elections," said Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for the Russian presidency, quoted by the state-run news agency Tass.

- "Conspiracy theory" -

The British government also said on Thursday that it was "almost certain" that "Russian actors" had sought to disrupt the legislative elections of December 12 by circulating documents during the campaign on a possible trade agreement between London and Washington after Brexit.

An investigation was then launched to try to identify the source of the leak of these documents, which had been published on the social network Reddit.

"Based on a comprehensive analysis, the government has concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 parliamentary elections by amplifying the online dissemination of illegally obtained government documents" said Foreign Minister Dominic Raab in a written statement to Parliament.

Labor campaign leader Jeremy Corbyn - who had to leave Labor after his debacle - brandished 450 pages of documents during the campaign, which he said proved government wanted to "sell" British health care to Americans (NHS), one of the key issues in the ballot.

Believing that the leak "was part of a campaign identified as coming from Russia", the social network Reddit had closed 61 suspicious accounts. Jeremy Corbyn had for his part qualified as "conspiracy theory" the assertions on the Russian origin of the leak of these documents.

The United Kingdom is also waiting in the coming days for the publication of a sensitive report on other possible Russian interference, in particular on the campaign for the 2016 referendum that led to Brexit.

Relations between London and Moscow are at their lowest since the poisoning on British soil of former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, in the city of Salisbury (south-west).

Russia had denied any involvement, but the case had resulted in a wave of cross-border expulsions of diplomats between London and its allies and Moscow. The two countries had only resumed the dialogue that ended 11 months earlier in February 2019.

© 2020 AFP