I saved the political stuff for today.
The G7 earlier this week asked Russia to disrupt those ransomware gangs operating within its borders. Quoting the statement: “we call on Russia [..] to identify, disrupt, and hold to account those within its borders who conduct ransomware attacks, abuse virtual currency to launder ransoms, and other cybercrime.”
NATO issued their joint communique as well. They have equated cyber attacks as the same as amounting an armed attack. This indicates that a cyber attack could lead to the invocation of Article 5.
And, President Biden and Russia’s President Putin had their much anticipated meeting. While Putin continued to deny Russia’s involvement in the ransom ware attacks, and the two not only put Ambassadors back in place, they also decided to organize meetings of experts to hold consultations on cybersecurity, in particular on which types of infrastructure should be considered “out of bounds” or “off-limits” to destructive cyberattacks.
I’m going to also link to an article that dives into the why for Russian hackers – and not surprisingly, it’s about economic opportunity.
Why do we care?
There was never going to be an instant off switch from the Russians on this issue. What happened instead was at least a single forward movement towards some change. We can hope for slightly less high-profile attacks… and understand that operationally, not much will change tomorrow, and probably not the day after that either. At best, this is some long term help.
It at least matters that governments are now looking at these attacks. That’s why we care — the profile is high enough now that law enforcement is involved too. So we care because this issue is clearly now “THAT” important. Which leads to…
