While the Russian army is waging an aggressive war in Ukraine, its hackers close to the Kremlin are attacking the entire world, including the United States.
For example, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said Russian government-backed hackers tried to break into Microsoft’s customer systems, including those of an unspecified number of government agencies.
A hacker team with the nickname “Midnight Blizzard” has used the vulnerabilities of Microsoft’s email system to steal correspondence between officials and the software maker.
CISA declined to name agencies that might have been affected. In their turn, Microsoft announced that it was “working with our customers to help them investigate and mitigate. This includes working with CISA on an emergency directive to provide guidance to government agencies.”
At the same time, CISA warned that the hackers might have attacked non-governmental organizations and companies as well.
That is why it is extremely important to reduce Russia’s ability to conduct such hacker attacks. To do this, more sanctions should be imposed to prevent Russia from getting modern telecommunications equipment and software. One of the recent examples – the U.S. Department of Commerce is weighing an enforcement action against Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab. This company has been linked to the Kremlin regime and the FSB, and it cannot be ruled out that its specialists may be behind the attacks on EU and US information infrastructure.
