Cybersecurity experts are warning that Russian hackers will likely try to disrupt a planned Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland next month, according to reports Sunday.
"International events of this kind often attract the attention of state-supported hacker groups, in this case especially Russian state-supported groups," said Samir Aliyev, a lecturer in cybersecurity at the Swiss University of St. Gallen, according to the SwissInfo website, which cited the Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag.
Swiss politician and cybersecurity expert Franz Grüter also told NZZ that anyone attending the two-day conference at the Bürgenstock resort outside Lucerne should take appropriate precautions.
"I would not log into a public Wi-Fi network at the Bürgenstock," Grüter said.
Unidentified sources in the Swiss Federal Office of Cybersecurity reportedly confirmed to NZZ that Russia was probably planning to disrupt the summit.
Representatives of 70 countries are scheduled to attend the conference on June 15 and 16 but Russia wasn't invited and has said the summit offered "no prospect of getting at least some tangible result."
"Without Russia, discussing security issues that concern us is absolutely futile," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the Russian newspaper Izvestia earlier this month.
Sunday's cybersecurity warnings came as the Swiss Senate is set to vote Monday on a measure approved by the House of Representatives to toughen the country's stance on expelling foreign spies, according to SwissInfo.
Switzerland hasn't removed any Russian representatives since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion and ongoing war against Ukraine in February 2020, the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung reported Sunday.
But Russia has reportedly dispatched dozens of new diplomats to the Swiss cities of Bern and Geneva since then, according to Bloomberg, which said Switzerland now hosts 217 Russian diplomats.
About one-third of Russia's diplomatic contingent is suspected of secretly working with its military, foreign or domestic intelligence units, a Swiss intelligence official told SonntagsZeitung.
Russia's Foreign Ministry didn't immediately return a request for comment, Bloomberg said.
