U.S. Companies Should Prepare for Putin's 'Gangster Diplomacy' As Risk of Russian Cyberattacks Grows
Chris Krebs may be best known for being fired as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in a tweet by then-president Donald Trump after he refuted Trump’s claims of election fraud in Nov. 2020. Since that dubious dismissal, Krebs, a respected voice in cybersecurity, has joined with former Facebook Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos to run Krebs Stamos Group, a cybersecurity consultancy.
Two weeks ago, Krebs joined CISA’s Shields Up campaign, to raise awareness of Russian hacking as tensions around Ukraine escalated and provide resources to businesses to ward off cyberattacks. While the U.S. government is most concerned with potential attacks on vital infrastructure, Krebs says private businesses large and small are at just as much risk—and can be just as damaging to the U.S. economy. As the U.S. ramped up sanctions on Putin and Russia, Krebs spoke with TIME about likely counter-attacks and how business leaders best protect their companies.
Experts have been warning that the conflict in Ukraine poses an unprecedented cyber risk even for U.S. and Western companies and organizations. Why is that?
Well, for one, we know that the Russian security services are very capable in the cyber arena. Ukraine has the unfortunate designation as being Russia’s test kitchen for some of their cyber tools—the Russians have taken down the Ukrainian electrical grid twice, both in 2015 and 2016. And then they launched the most destructive cyberattack in history, the NotPetya attack [ransomware widely attributed to the Russian military that targeted Ukraine’s government, financial, and energy institutions, as well as global companies with offices in Ukraine] in June of 2017. So we know that they’re not afraid to use their tools, generally speaking, but also specifically in coordination with a military assault and invasion. In 2008, when they went into Georgia, they used destructive attacks against government agencies in Georgia. As well as their classic technique of spreading disinformation and false flag type operations.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u-s-companies-should-prepare-for-putin-s-gangster-diplomacy-as-risk-of-russian-cyberattacks-grows/ar-AAUlIzb
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