Source: Insurance Journal
A reported presented by the FBI this week directs at the U.S. private sector to gear up for a potentially upcoming series of cyber attacks- state-sponsored and launched by Russia. This comes as tension over Ukraine increases, as they threaten a conflict in Eastern Europe. Attributed to the FBI office, the Liason Information Report (LIR) was presented,
The report specified an advanced persistent threat (APT) that is Russian state-sponsored. It was said to entail cyber activities as tensions with the Russian state increase by the day. It seemed to look like a direct consequence of the worsening security situation concentrated on the Ukrainian border.
The anonymous US cyber warfare officer further confirmed that the cyber attacks were especially targeting those companies dealing with Pentagon or Ukrainian entities. Russia is suspected to target clear defence contractors, private ones that support organisations like the US military. Authorities suspect that such attacks on the critical infrastructure aim the destabilisation of a country. It come across as an intended threat to the safety of its citizens and shake the confidence in the leadership of the country.
The FBI report said such Russian APT actors “have used spear phishing and brute force cyber network attacks (CNA), while exploiting known vulnerabilities against accounts and networks with weak security.”
On Friday, February 18, the White House blamed cyber attacks that destabilised the the state institutions of Ukraine- political, military and banking sectors. The White House held the Kremlin accountable for these series of attacks.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blenkin remarked such a series of cyber attacks as typical of Russia’s tactics. He added how the US had continuously aided Ukraine to improve its cyber defences, anticipating a Russian attack. This one of the main reasons behind cybersecurity being an integral topic of discussion between Biden and Russian president Putin. The discussion at Geneva in June 2021, following ransomware attacks by supposedly Russian-speaking groups.
Biden held Russia responsible for the said SolarWinds hacking that resulted in a potentially elongated infiltration. It was the infiltration of the software which is utilised by federal agencies, along with leading American companies. The US President issued, against Russia institutions (financial and technological), sanctions. Blinken clarified that these claims were aimed at seeking reason from Putin for these attacks
However, Russia has not taken responsibility for any of the claims made against them. They have denied being part of the cyber attacks against the US, rather blaming the White House for doing so against Russia. Subsequently, they also denied any planning for the invasion of Ukraine.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>The U.S. has technical information linking Russian GRU to this week’s distributed denial of service attacks in Ukraine. Known GRU infrastructure has been noted transmitting high volumes of communications to Ukraine-based IP addresses and associated banking-related domains.</p>— National Security Council (@WHNSC) <a href=”https://twitter.com/WHNSC/status/1494796573959725057?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>February 18, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
