The White House has received new intelligence that Russia is “exploring options” for using cyberattacks to disrupt US critical infrastructure.
The Biden administration mentioned the potential threat on Monday in an alert urging US companies to be on guard. “There is no evidence of a specific cyberattack we are anticipating for,” Deputy National Security Advisor Anne Neuberger said in a White House briefing. But "there is some preparatory activity that we’re seeing.
“Preparatory activity could mean scanning websites, it could be hunting for vulnerabilities,” she added. “There’s a range of activities that malicious cyber actors use, whether they’re nation-state or criminals.”
For weeks now, the US has been warning about a potential cyberattack from Russia after the White House imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Kremlin for its invasion of Ukraine. Neuberger declined to go into details on what new intelligence the US has received. But she noted a "shift" in Russia’s intentions to carry out such an attack.
“To be clear, there is no certainty there will be a cyber incident on critical infrastructure,” she said. Nevertheless, last week the White House held classified briefings with the US companies it fears could be targeted. Today’s warning is meant to serve as a wider call to action for all private organizations to bolster their IT defenses.
“The majority of our critical infrastructure, as you know, is owned and operated by the private sector,” Neuberger said. “And those owners and operators have the ability and the responsibility to harden the systems and networks that we all rely on. We continue to see adversaries compromising systems that use known vulnerabilities for which there are patches. This is deeply troubling."
Europe may have already experienced one such cyberattack. Last month, US satellite internet provider Viasat suffered a major outage for users in Europe and Ukraine right as Russia began to invade the country. In addition, Ukraine has faced several waves of "destructive" malware attacks, capable of wiping entire Windows systems.
Neuberger said the US has been investigating the Viasat incident, but for now, the White House is refraining from pointing fingers at the Russian government.
To help the companies improve their IT defenses, the White House released a fact sheet with a long list of recommended practices. The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency also published numerous guides. If a Russian cyberattack does occur against US companies, President Biden has said the US is prepared to strike back.