Two Democratic lawmakers are urging US President Joe Biden to step up cybersecurity assistance to Ukraine and European allies following a hack that disrupted service at a key Ukrainian internet service provider last month.
In a letter to Biden on Tuesday, delivered to CNN, Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Bill Keating, both from Massachusetts, expressed concern that Russia could continue with cyberattacks in Ukraine or with hacking, which would upset NATO’s resolve the test could hit if the Russian military advances in Ukraine stands.
A cyberattack last week on Ukrtelecom, which bills itself as Ukraine’s largest “fixed-line” internet and phone provider, reportedly reduced the telecom operator’s connectivity to 13% of pre-war levels.
The lawmakers, both members of their respective chambers’ foreign affairs committees, want a newly formed Cybersecurity Office at the State Department to strengthen U.S. cooperation with Ukraine and European allies on cybersecurity issues, and in turn, help oppose Russian ones Defend against hacking threats.
A spokesman for Markey’s office called the $37 million the White House is asking Congress to run the office in fiscal year 2023 as a “strong starting point,” but said it was “absolutely imperative” that the State Department engage with government agencies like the US Cyber Command and the Department of Homeland Security, which have long provided cybersecurity assistance to Ukraine.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
Aside from the new office, the State Department has provided millions of dollars in aid to Kyiv in recent years to strengthen its networks. And the head of the US Cyber Command, the military’s hacking unit, said Tuesday that the command deployed a team of cyber specialists to Ukraine late last year to help defend Ukraine’s infrastructure.
More on the hacks: Although there have been a number of Russia-related hacking incidents against Ukrainian organizations since the beginning of the war, there hasn’t been the level of disruptive hacking of critical infrastructure that some analysts had feared.
One exception was a cyberattack early in the war that shut down internet service for tens of thousands of satellite modems in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. US officials are investigating this incident as a possible state-sponsored Russian hack, CNN previously reported.
On March 21, Biden warned US chief executives that “the scale of Russia’s cyber capacity is and will be quite momentous.” So far, no momentous hacks of US organizations publicly attributed to the Russian government have come to light. But US officials continue to brace for the possibility.
Markey and Keating called on Biden to “immediately” appoint a ambassador at large to head the State Department’s new cybersecurity office. (Secretary of State Antony Blinken told State Department officials Monday that Biden would be nominating someone for the role “very soon.”)
Democratic lawmakers also want to know what lessons the Biden administration has learned from Russian hacking attacks in Ukraine in recent weeks.
“How is the administration coordinating U.S. government agencies to apply these teachings to secure potential vulnerabilities in the U.S. and our allies and partners?” Markey and Keating wrote to Biden, requesting responses by April 29.