New sanctions the Unites States is placing on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine threaten to spill over into cyberattacks.
According to CNN, the ever present possibility of Russian cyberwarfare has led the American government to go on high alert, especially due to past cyber disruptions linked to Russia.
A senior FBI insider said on Tuesday that American businesses and local governments need to secure their digital infrastructure against potential ransomware threats. Days earlier, multiple government agencies met with executives from major banks, warning them about threats from Russian hackers.
The officials spoke about how to defend critical banking systems against Russian-backed hackers in the wake of the Biden administration imposing additional sanctions on Russia for entering Ukraine.
The biggest cyberattacks in the last two years in the U.S. have allegedly come from Russian hackers, including the SolarWinds attack that made its way inside government agencies in 2020, a multi-day ransomware take-down of one of the nation’s biggest pipelines in 2021, and a cyberattack on JBS, one of America’s largest meat companies.
Ukraine has been the victim of a series of Russia-linked cyberattacks since its conflict with Russia started. On Wednesday, a cyberattack hit the websites of the Ukrainian parliament, multiple banks and government agencies.