According to a report from The New York Times, the Biden administration is planning cyberattacks against Russia in the coming weeks. The cyber offensive could come with new sanctions and would mark a serious escalation towards Moscow from the new administration.
Anonymous US officials told the Times that the first “major move” is expected to happen over the next three weeks. It will consist of a “series of clandestine actions across Russian networks that are intended to be evident to President Vladimir V. Putin and his intelligence services and military but not to the wider world.”
The officials said the cyberattack will come along with new economic sanctions on Russia. Last week, the Biden administration slapped sanctions on Russian officials over the jailing and alleged poisoning of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
The planned cyberattack is being framed as retaliation for the hack of the software firm SolarWinds that affected several US government agencies. The SolarWinds hack was discovered late last year. It was immediately blamed on Russia by members of Congress and Western media outlets despite a lack of evidence that showed Moscow was responsible.
The US formally attributed blame to Russia for the SolarWinds hack in January. The FBI, NSA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Office of the DNI released a statement that said the hack was “likely Russian in origin.” Missing from the statement was any evidence for the accusation.
The reality is, attributing cyberactivity is difficult as hackers have methods to conceal their identity. One reason US officials and media outlets say it could have been Russia is the sophistication of the hack. But testimony from SolarWinds’ former CEO and a cybersecurity expert made it clear that anybody could have accessed SolarWinds’ servers due to a major security lapse.
After the hack was first discovered, Vinoth Kumar, a cybersecurity expert who advised SolarWinds, said the password for the firm’s update server was “solarwinds123.” Kumar said he warned SolarWinds that anyone could access the server because of this password. “This could have been done by any attacker, easily,” he told Reuters last December.
Kumar’s claim about the password turned out to be true. It was confirmed during congressional hearings in February that not only was “solarwinds123” the password it was also leaked and available to the public on the internet for years. Former SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson blamed an intern for posting the password on GitHub, a platform programmers use to share software information.
“They violated our password policies and they posted that password on an internal, on their own private Github account,” Thompson said during a joint hearing by the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees.
Sudhakar Ramakrishna, the current SolarWinds CEO, said the password was publicly available as early as 2017. “I believe that was a password that an intern used on one of his Github servers back in 2017,” he said. SolarWinds did not correct the issue until November 2019. According to the timeline from SolarWinds, suspicious activity on their server began in September 2019.
Despite the fact that it is well established that anyone could have accessed SolarWinds’ servers and the best the US intelligence agencies could come up with is that Moscow is “likely responsible,” the US is poised to launch a cyberattack on Russia anyway.
The Times story that reported the Biden administration’s plans also mentions another recently discovered hack of Microsoft email servers that is being blamed on another US adversary, China. The hack apparently affected servers used by small businesses, local governments, and military contractors.
So far, it’s just Microsoft making the claim that China was responsible for this cyberattack, and the US has yet to attribute blame. But according to the Times, the Biden administration is already mulling options to go after China for the Microsoft intrusion.
According to the Times, in August 2018, President Trump signed a secret document giving US Cyber Command more authorities to go on the offensive in the cyber realm. These authorities are reportedly under review by the Biden administration, and any major cyberattacks must be brought to the White House and the National Security Council before being carried out.
The sheer level of stupidity that both parties inherently posses is mind boggling. We have become Rome in the last throes of its dying empire. The US is fas becoming irrelevant and bad actor on all fronts.
So said Chalmers Johnson, Chris Hedges, and others. Both parties are not reading or listening. They enjoy boatloads of money from the military industrial complex.
Preparing? We have been doing that for years and years. Good grief!
There is no end to the vilification of Russia and it’s leader. The Russian Hoax has been exposed as the evil concocted by the best brains in the US from Hillary C. to the “Intelligence” services and the Blob ably assisted by the UK. Trump was manacled throughout his Presidency.
Then we got the biggest liar of them all taking charge of the Blob and China was at the receiving end of similar fakery, and what’s more, the great majority have bought into it.
If as you say, “Trump was manacled throughout his Presidency,” then there are two problems. One, he lied to get elected in 2016, and two, he didn’t resign early on when it was clear he couldn’t lay a glove on the swamp. The single reason he was elected is he presented himself as the only person with the will and the strength to sideline the swamp. He had neither. Ivanka is his only concern.
The answer to hacking is to harden your system, not to go running boohoo to the government. ALL governments hack and disrupt, us more than anyone.
Whether or not Russia did the original attack on the US, decisionmakers evidently believe that Russia has the capability to do so.
So how would that Russia react to a cyberattack? How did the US react to the Pearl Harbor attack? How did Russia react to the attack by Georgia or the US coup sponsored in Ukraine?
This is not peace. This is an attack, a war. Expect to get back what you do to others.
The headline of this article should’ve said “alleged” or “supposed” SolarWinds Hack since that’s the reality. Instead, the headline-which is the only thing many people will see when scanning the news-presents the “hack” as fact, a gift to the trillion dollar US genocide racket and a knife in the back of US taxpayers who are their slaves and are forced to fund their crimes against humanity.
With all of America”s manifold problems and challenges, is this is how we waste out time prestige & resources. Go drive around Baltimore Biden’s premere base a wasteland of abandonment and nonproductivity, crime, a rust belt no man’s land of racial discord & strife, not unlike Biden’s comity with Moscow and Putin. How about some gracious jester or offering, instead of this effete lashing out and threats ala schoolyard bully. Think big and proud Joe, not petty and quarlsome. Lead by example and righteousness on the high road of innovation and prosperity. You should be better than this tit for tat confrontation, posturing & threats. Make your time in the office big open and wise. Ditch this , bunker business and proselytize. Bring greatness to our lives…