As Russian President Putin is in a mindset of finishing the war only after he takes control of all Ukrainian cities, tech companies from America are announcing their retaliation backed business withdrawals in the said region, in compliance with the government sanctions
First, it was Nike, followed by furniture Store Ikea that announced yesterday that they will shut down their businesses in the Russian Federation as Moscow has waged a war with Kyiv against the will of the entire world.
Now, Microsoft issued a public statement on March 4th,2022 stating that it will suspend all the new sales of its services and products in Russia on an immediate note. A tweet posted by Brad-Smith, the Chairperson and President of Microsoft confirmed the intention of the Windows OS giant in the coming days.
News is out that the American tech company will also suspend security updates for all the PCs operating on Russian soil from next week. Because of this, the devices will fall prey to cyber attacks launching from all spheres.
Although the statement was released by unconfirmed sources, it could as a boon to hackers who are always looking for loopholes to exploit computers and networks.
Microsoft has pledged humanitarian support to Ukraine and assured to protect its critical infrastructure from state-sponsored cyber attacks. It also divulged some details about the newly detected malware dubbed “ FoxBlade” found in Ukrainian networks, even before the Russian military started the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th,2022.
Security experts feel that the yet to be confirmed statement about the suspension of security updates by Microsoft could be the words dictated by the White House that is intending to invade Russia through digital warfare.
Note 1- In the year 2015, Russian President Putin announced that his government was looking to ditch Microsoft products for software made in the Russian Federation, just to attain digital sovereignty. It engaged New Cloud Technology company in the development of Office and email software, as alternatives to MS Office and Microsoft Outlook.
Note 2– As the newly designed software is much cheaper than its Microsoft counterpart, Moscow’s 600,000 municipal employees were asked to use the same by the country’s Ministry of Communication in 2019.
Note 3- Russia is currently running out of cash because of the war-driven sanctions imposed by the west. In September 2020, it made it official that all its government agencies operating in the country should prioritize the use of software developed in the Russian Federation.
