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Security United States

DHS Warns of Russian Cyberattack On US If It Responds To Ukraine Invasion (go.com) 129

As tensions rise in the standoff over Ukraine, the Department of Homeland Security has warned that the U.S. response to a possible Russian invasion could result in a cyberattack launched against the U.S. by the Russian government or its proxies. ABC News reports: "We assess that Russia would consider initiating a cyber attack against the Homeland if it perceived a US or NATO response to a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine threatened its long-term national security," a DHS Intelligence and Analysis bulletin sent to law enforcement agencies around the country and obtained by ABC News said. The bulletin was dated Jan. 23, 2022.

Russia, DHS said, has a "range of offensive cyber tools that it could employ against US networks," and the attacks could range from a low level denial of service attack, to "destructive" attacks targeting critical infrastructure. "We assess that Russia's threshold for conducting disruptive or destructive cyber attacks in the Homeland probably remains very high and we have not observed Moscow directly employ these types of cyber attacks against US critical infrastructure -- notwithstanding cyber espionage and potential prepositioning operations in the past," the bulletin said.
Last year, Russian cybercriminals launched a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, shutting down operations and causing widespread outages across the country. Meat supplier JBS also had its operations shutdown due to Russian based hackers.
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DHS Warns of Russian Cyberattack On US If It Responds To Ukraine Invasion

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  • by zephvark ( 1812804 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:42PM (#62204579)

    antagonized. Massachusetts calls for National Guard reinforcements.

  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:52PM (#62204597)

    I'm pretty sure the US has its own cyberattack plan in place to go after Russia as a retaliatory measure if the need arises. Of course they would never speak of it before deployment, and may not admit to it afterwards.

    What concerns me in the long term is the likelihood of false-flag operations wherein a country engages in cyber warfare against its own citizens and blames foreign actors.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > What concerns me in the long term is the likelihood of false-flag operations wherein a country engages in cyber warfare against its own citizens and blames foreign actors.

      You sound like a conspiracy theorist. Next you'll tell me Fauci helped fund gain of function research on corona viruses at the very same lab the COVID-19 was suspected of coming from. I mean, these are all fanciful delusions and all you have is signed letters from the director of the NIH attesting to it. But I mean, what OTHER proo

      • This place is full of these people, not sure if they are foreign actors pushing online agendas or just ridiculously clueless people that forget the past and watch Faux News all day.
    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @09:42PM (#62204719) Journal

      Interesting that you mentioned that. Just yesterday I started working with someone who is doing their master's thesis on what the US response should be in the digital realm.

      One of my first items of feedback is that they should remember the decisions are being made by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Hurting *China* doesn't necessarily have any effect. You want to make it painful for the Communist Central Committee if they continue attacks. Actions that harm the average Chinese farmer do little good.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Actions that harm Chinese citizens will actually help the CCP. They position themselves as protecting the Chinese people from harm, and will spin it as evidence that the protection is needed against foreign aggression.

        It certainly won't make Chinese people think that maybe the attacks are justified.

    • Personally, I would worry more about non-affiliated entities taking a position like the Belarus railroad attack.

      I wish I understood Putin’s game plan better; it kind of seems like he has a Napolean complex, and if so something needs to be done in retaliation if he does (further) invade Ukraine.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wonder how well prepared Russian infrastructure is. If they plan to launch a cyberattack it would make sense to harden their own installations first.

      • Their power infrastructure is probably less networked and more primitive and therefore ironically more safe. Humans are likely in the loop in more cases, which means their grid might be slower to react, but also harder to attack.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Sig: 'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.

      Shhh, don't expose it until after I die, Dude.

  • by aberglas ( 991072 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @08:54PM (#62204605)

    Some things will fail, but this will but a strong focus on computer security which is long overdue.

    Good to have this happen now, before we are totally dependent on computers. They cannot yet cause cars to crash etc.

  • Once the best minds in Silicon Valley are busy hacking Russia interests by government order, Putin will want a ceasefire.

    • by The Rizz ( 1319 )

      Fuck, why stop at the best minds? Just let the US Govt. declare open cyberattack season on the Russians - nobody in the US will be prosecuted for any cyberattacks against the Russians. Let some of the ethical hackers who have always wanted to try a real hack give it a shot without risking jail time, and help the country (and the world) at the same time. The massive amount of script kiddies is going to make the signal to noise ratio so high that the real US cyber response will be more likely to slip through

    • The best minds in Silicon Valley are a lot more interested in making money than screwing around with guys who put Polonium in your tea.

  • We are already surviving Facebook, Twitter, Google and Verizon. You will be a minor nuisance in comparison.

  • What do we lose? Nothing. Cut links to anyone that lets traffic in from them. Countries can decide which side of the internet they want to be on.
    • by Wolfrider ( 856 )

      My thought as well, cut the country off at the backbone level and see how fast they backpedal once the screaming starts from the average citizen

  • I mean, come on, why does the US of A always have to be the big brother and step up to defend anyone under the claims of liberty and freedom, when there are fights going on under our very own territory? See daily St Louis, Chicago, Baltimore news. We achieved the highest murder rates in 25 years. See SoCal cities being sacked day after day. But the US of A must go all around the world to help another country to defend itself from many of their own.

    It is about time leaders of this country pretend we can affo

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Evtim ( 1022085 ) on Tuesday January 25, 2022 @06:34AM (#62205317)

      Well, somebody has to do it, I think. In the modern world, the way it is, we still battle different social and economic systems. That's a tricky one to evaluate. Particularity now, when the globe got so small all of sudden and everything is so interconnected.

      Today's critical (ha-ha) thinking is based on relativism. No system is "better" than other (but you better accept our system or we will cancel you!). On one hand that sounds OK - let the peoples decide what form of economy and government they want. But it seems that's not the whole picture. If you allow free travel between nations, the result is almost unanimous support for the western system. Everyone wants to live here; people flock from every continent and every society.

      As an immigrant myself I can assure you that some immigrants are only after the money because their situation back home is really difficult. But when you talk with enough people you realize that the social order, the framework of the law, the relatively low corruption, the relatively high level of personal freedom, mostly working bureaucracy etc. are just as important if not more than the money. And let's face it, the money is a result of said society, not the other way around (this of course flies against the narrative of "all the riches of the west is based on slavery and colonialism" nonsense).

      The original, enlightened, western values won the popular vote of planet Earth. So, do we need a global enforcer of these values? Well, do we have declaration of human rights? Do we talk endlessly about freedom and human dignity? Right to live, right to speak right for this and that..the global politics speaks about these all the time. We have the UN and plethora of conventions to ensure these rights are available to all people. So it seems that there is a framework and someone has to enforce it.

      I would still agree, partially, with "leave them alone" sentiment but only if the totalitarian countries would stop invading and annexing others. Also, being born and raised under Marxism, we would have welcomed a military intervention form the west to rid us of the communist dictatorship, which was installed by the occupying Russian army after heavily rigged "free elections". Many East Europeans still hold a grudge against the west for "leaving us for dead to the murderous savage Stalin". Only now, to our shock and disgust, we learn that many "thinkers" in your society were perfectly kosher with the millions being killed. I guess millions of corpses is nothing when it happens to someone else! Moreover, these "thinkers" agree that the communist ideal was worth the price!! The same thinking that cancels people who speak today about the horrors of authoritarian regimes (see NK defectors). They also believe these "elections" I mentioned earlier were fair and it was the will of the people to live under genocidal despots.

      I remember my shock and indignation when I went first time to a Western country (France) in 1998 and saw graffiti of the hammer and sickle on a few walls in town. I actually asked the French if we should call the police, since that symbol has killed almost an order of magnitude more people than the swastika, and that one is forbidden to display, no? I really could not believe my eyes. Little did I know that it was mostly the French so-called "philosophers" who were watching the genocide in our lands with an approving smile, while concocting cognitive diarrhea aimed to usher that bright future in the west as well. If not today, then certainly when we successfully brainwash the new generation (they succeeded marvelously) to overthrow the bourgeoisie order.

      I see not much hope for the future, because the West, and particularly the US seems to like authoritarianism more and more. I don't trust you anymore to protect human rights and freedoms. You cancelled them.

    • Those cities you cite are war zones of sorts because of the political policies of appeasement your elected officials chose to roll out. A crime boss takes and takes and takes, regardless of how much appeasement (aka weakness) you roll out. Stop releasing hardened criminals because they *gasp* might catch covid, while at the same time threaten prison time for anyone publicly refusing to wear a mask yet be a criminal for not other reason. Its hypocrisy and outs you for being weak.
  • Meh (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Alypius ( 3606369 )
    It's not like Russia will invade wearing a viking hat or attend a school board meeting. After all, those are the real threats that DC is worried about.
  • by zeeky boogy doog ( 8381659 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @10:19PM (#62204807)
    Since nobody would ever be stupid enough to directly connect the safety-critical systems in our municipal water facilities, gas pipelines, or atomic power plants to the Internet, such an action couldn't ultimately be more than a serious nuisance.
  • by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Monday January 24, 2022 @10:22PM (#62204813)
    Large scale cyber attacks between US and USSR could escalate quickly. At what level of damage and cost from a cyber attack, is a conventional or even nuclear response warranted? We need agreed upon rules of cyber war with clear red lines.

    If Russia melts down a US nuclear reactor, or wipes out then national power grid, or ransomwares the entire US banking system, or simply wipes every windows PC in the country, what is an appropriate response?
    • For sure, if you're damaging infrastructure, then the means you used to do so are only important in terms of how much collateral damage they cause.
    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > or simply wipes every windows PC in the country

      The Year of the Linux Desktop may finally arrive ... and then wiped by Xi.

    • Large scale cyber attacks between US and USSR could escalate quickly. At what level of damage and cost from a cyber attack, is a conventional or even nuclear response warranted? We need agreed upon rules of cyber war with clear red lines. If Russia melts down a US nuclear reactor, or wipes out then national power grid, or ransomwares the entire US banking system, or simply wipes every windows PC in the country, what is an appropriate response?

      They'd have to be utterly stupid to do cyberattacks on USA. If they invade Ukraine they do *NOT* want USA, NATO, etc. involved. Why give them (another) pretext? Especially now that Bidet pretty much gave them green light, by saying that if they invade he will impose uhhh, what was it? "terrible sanctions"? I'm sure they are all shaking, especially since they spent the last 15 years reorienting toward China. It should have been "if you invade you will meet us on the field of battle", but that's what you get

      • It should have been "if you invade you will meet us on the field of battle", but that's what you get when you start the shitshow called "democrat in White House".

        Oh right, because the orange guy would have declared war on his handler.

        • It should have been "if you invade you will meet us on the field of battle", but that's what you get when you start the shitshow called "democrat in White House".

          Oh right, because the orange guy would have declared war on his handler.

          Don't you think the situation has become too serious to just repeat the democrat talking points that even you don't believe in anyway? Or do you think it's a coincidence Putin is doing this shit now and not two years ago?

          • Don't you think the situation has become too serious to just repeat the democrat talking points that even you don't believe in anyway?

            They are not just democrap talking points, and I do believe in them. 45 ran out of places to borrow money after it came out that he had defrauded Deutsche Bank into lending to him with his phone call in which he pretended to be someone else and claimed that he was in control of his father's assets quite some years before that was true, and Deutsche Bank stopped loaning him money (which they were doing for years only to avoid the appearance that they had been idiots for loaning him money.) So he had to go to

            • Or do you think it's a coincidence Putin is doing this shit now and not two years ago?

              No, I don't think it's a coincidence. He did it on purpose to make Democratic leadership look weak, because it serves his purpose to put Republicans in power because they will shit all over the country and also not go to war with him directly. They will fight proxy wars in the desert for the enrichment of the MIC and their various buddies like Halliburton (which was awarded several lucrative no-bid contracts the last time we were bombing brown people in the sand) but they aren't going to go to war with Russia any more than anyone else who can avoid it.

              Okay. Obama looses Crimea and offers pretty much "thoughts and prayers" and that's all (and also immediately stops military exports to Ukraine), but he's the enemy of russkies. Trump stabilizes the war in Donbass, restores military exports to Ukraine and is the only world leader that puts sanctions on Nord Stream that actually have teeth and slow it down by two years - aaand he's "friend" of russkies because some democrat-run investigation "couldn't prove he didn't collude" with russkies. Bidet again stops

              • Tell us you've never heard of misdirection without telling us you've never heard of misdirection

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      How do you even identify the real source of an attack? Just because it comes from a compromised server in Russia doesn't mean that it's a Russian attack.

      You want to be really, really sure before starting a hot war or melting down a nuclear reactor.

    • ... simply wipes every windows PC in the country, what is an appropriate response?

      "Hurray! The Linux desktop is upon us!"

  • They've had -- and demonstrated, in small-scale proofs-of-concept -- the ability to completely and totally wreck our infrastructure electronically. All they've needed is a reason to do it, and that reason is, indeed, imminent. We (and NATO, and I imagine most of the EU) are not going to just let Russia waltz into Ukraine and take over. So hang on to your hats, kids, shit's about to get real.
    • We (and NATO, and I imagine most of the EU) are not going to just let Russia waltz into Ukraine and take over. So hang on to your hats, kids, shit's about to get real.

      LOL. You remember you have a democrat in White House? Bidet already announced what the response will be if Russia invades: sanctions (and *not* military action - for those who need to have things explained). Might as well have been "thoughts and prayers" for all the fear this is going to strike into russkies.

      And EU is too weak to do anything without US backing, and that's even provided you could somehow magically convince Germans to finally stop being gas-friends with Putin.

  • In threads like this you want to filter out what has been upmodded and only want to see downmodded stuff, but the filter does not support that. Feature request!

  • Russia took down at least some of their outwards-facing and -connected services. https://www.theglobeandmail.co... [theglobeandmail.com]
  • Remotely audit all mission-critical* networks in the US for security and resilience.

    *When attending ISO 9000 seminars at NASA, I was informed the US government considers anything that could result in fatalities, OR the damage/destruction of property or outage of services where net cost is in excess of, IIRC, $15 million to be mission-critical. The DoD and DoJ would probably include risks to national security in that definition, that hospitals/CDC would include anything that endangers public health on a larg

  • ...cybersecurity, in actual implementation terms, has decided to make much of its critical infrastructure accessible online. Great move, USA!
  • I'd have to think that this is likely the biggest worry for US policymakers, more so than runaway military conflict. It's "easy" to avoid that, just don't directly challenge Russian military forces in Ukraine with US/NATO military forces.

    Cyberattacks are an obvious Russian retaliation -- they impose real economic costs, have plausible deniability, and are low cost to implement. You don't even have to go after specific strategic targets, either -- hammering e-commerce or small business at scale delivers th

  • Given that they compromised the presidential election with $40,000 worth of facebook memes, I shudder to think what they could do if they went all out.

  • We get cyberattacks from Russia all the time, maybe not state sponsored but certainly state approved. If accountants didn't decide whether or not to invest in cybersecurity software we would have a lot less of these attacks.

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