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Last month, Mr. Biden used his summit with Putin to argue that ransomware is emerging as an even greater threat, causing the kind of economic disruption that no state can tolerate. Mr. Biden specifically mentioned stopping the flow of gasoline on the East Coast. Attack on Colonial Pipeline The closure of major meat processing plants in June and previous ransomware attacks that paralyzed hospitals.
The issue has become so urgent that it has begun to shift negotiations between Washington and Moscow, raising digital weapons control to a level of urgency previously seen in nuclear arms control negotiations. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said American officials will meet with Russian officials next week to discuss the ransomware attacks — a dialogue the two leaders agreed on at their summit in Geneva.
On Saturday, as the attacks continued, Mr. Putin delivered a speech timed to the rollout of Russia’s latest national security strategy, outlining measures to respond to foreign influence. The document claimed that Russia’s “traditional spiritual-moral and cultural-historical values are under active attack by the United States and its allies.”
While reaffirming Moscow’s commitment to use diplomacy to resolve conflicts, the strategy stressed that Russia “sees it legitimate to take symmetrical and asymmetrical measures” to prevent “unfriendly actions” by foreign states.
These words were Mr. Putin’s response to his summit with Mr. Biden, cybersecurity experts said.
“Biden did a good job putting up a flag, but the first thing you do when you’re a rogue is to test that red line,” said cybersecurity expert James A. Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. . “And that’s what we see here.”
Mr Lewis added that “low-level penalties” such as sanctions have been exhausted. “The White House will have to use more aggressive measures, whether in cyberspace or a more painful legal or financial maneuver.”
Stronger measures have been discussed for a long time and are sometimes used. When Russian intelligence agencies put malicious code — believed to be found to this day — on the American power grid in recent years. The United States, in turn, put the code on the Russian grid, and seen as a deterrent. Prior to the 2020 election, the United States Cyber Command shut down the servers of a major Russian cybercrime operation to prevent it from locking down the voting infrastructure.
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