Coca-Cola Apologizes To Ukraine Over Russia Map
By RFE/RL
The Coca-Cola Company has officially apologized to Ukraine for publishing on Russian social media a map of Russia that included Crimea, which was illegally annexed by the Kremlin in March 2014.
"I can only apologize for this as it simply should never have happened," wrote Clyde C. Tuggle, senior vice president of the global beverage giant, in a letter to the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington dated January 6.
The letter reads that the map "was prepared by an outside agency without Coca-Cola’s knowledge or approval."
On December 30, Coca-Cola Russia posted a holiday greetings message to the Russian social-media site VKontakte along with a map of the country dotted with Christmas trees.
The map, however, sparked an angry response from Russian users who complained it excluded several regions, including Crimea.
On January 5, the company issued an apology on its official VKontakte page, along with a new map that included the Black Sea peninsula. The new map generated a fresh wave of outrage from Ukrainians.
Merkel sees progress on Ukraine crisis in 'Normandy format' over next months
MAGDEBURG, Germany, Jan 7 (Reuters) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she believes there will be progress in the "Normandy format" negotiations on the Ukraine crisis over the next few months.
The "Normandy format" includes France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
"I believe that we will achieve progress in the Normandy negotiations between Russia and the Ukraine within the next months. I am optimistic," Merkel said at a Chamber of Industry and Commerce event in Magdeburg.
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, January 7, 2016. Check back here tomorrow morning for more of our continuing coverage.
Russian Hacker Sandworm Blamed For Ukraine Power Outage
By RFE/RL
U.S. cyberintelligence firm iSight Partners said it is certain that a Russian hacking group known as Sandworm caused last month's unprecedented power outage in Ukraine.
"We believe that Sandworm was responsible," iSight's director of espionage analysis, John Hultquist, told Reuters.
ISight and other cybersecurity companies had been leaning toward blaming Sandworm, a nebulous, Moscow-based hacking group that has been strategically aligned with the Russian government, because of the Ukraine hackers' use of BlackEnergy malware associated with Sandworm.
U.S. security agencies have suspected that Russia was behind the Ukraine power outage as well as similar attacks in the United States and Europe, but have not publicly named any culprits to date.
Ukraine's state security service has blamed Russia for the blackout affecting 80,000 customers in western Ukraine on December 23.
ISight came to the conclusion it was Sandworm based on its analysis of BlackEnergy 3 and KillDisk malware used in the attack, and intelligence from "sensitive sources," Hultquist told Reuters.
Hultquist said it is not clear whether Sandworm is working directly for the Russian government. The group is named Sandworm because its malware is embedded with references to the "Dune" science-fiction series.
"It is a Russian actor operating with alignment to the interest of the state," Hultquist said. "Whether or not it's freelance, we don't know."
To date, Sandworm has primarily engaged in espionage, including a string of attacks in the United States using BlackEnergy that prompted a December 2014 alert from the Department of Homeland Security, according to iSight.
That alert said a sophisticated malware campaign had compromised some U.S. industrial control systems.
While no outages or physical destruction was reported as a result of those attacks in the United States and similar ones in Europe, some experts said that may be simply because the attackers did not want to go that far.
ISight said the earlier attacks outside Ukraine may have been experimental in nature.
“ISight believes the activity is Russian in origin and the intrusions they carried out against U.S. and European SCADA systems were reconnaissance for attack,” an iSight spokesperson told Infosecurity Magazine.
"It's not a major stretch to conclude the difference in the outcomes of the attacks in the Ukraine versus those in the U.S. were an issue of intent, not capability," Eric Cornelius, managing director of cybersecurity firm Cylance Inc. and a former U.S. homeland security official responsible for securing critical infrastructure, told Reuters.
ISight said Sandworm has been staging attacks against Ukrainian officials and media for some time. During Ukrainian elections last fall, for example, Sandworm's "malware of choice," BlackEnergy, was allegedly used in destructive attacks against Ukrainian media.