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Cyber attacks are an “attractive” offensive tactic for Russian President Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Ukraine because they fall “below the threshold of war.”
So says Snehal Antani, the founder of cybersecurity company Horizon3, who recently retired as the first chief engineer of the Army’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).
“Cyber is becoming a sub-war response, which is becoming an attractive option,” Antani explained. “Well, if you think about how the Russians are going, sure they could attack head on and let everyone know it was them. But they have also built a very robust proxy network of criminal organizations and others who are effectively cutouts so they can direct and direct proxies, cutouts, criminal organizations to act on their behalf and ensure they are below the threshold of war remain.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a flag-raising ceremony at a state residence outside Moscow via video link. (Alexey Nikolsky/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)
According to Antani, it is “very difficult” to pin the blame for cyberattacks on specific countries, and “very easy” for countries to “allay suspicion on someone else.”
“Cyberattacks are an ecosystem of state and non-state actors that are financially and/or politically aligned to work together” to coordinate attacks against their adversaries, he said.
Driving forces behind Russian cyberattacks during Putin’s invasion of Ukraine include heavy Western sanctions against Russia and the impact of corporate giants pulling services out of the country in protest at the war in Ukraine.
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“Citizens will notice that McDonald’s is closed, and this is beginning to poke holes in the narrative that the Russian government is delivering about the success and global acceptance of its actions,” Antani said. “We’ve never seen that before, especially in a digitally integrated economy. If you think about World War II, at no time was the GM plant in Michigan really directly threatened by the people we were at war with.”
A McDonald’s restaurant in Moscow, Russia. (REUTERS/Tatyana Makeyeva/File Photo)
The FBI announced earlier this week that it would work with the private sector to combat foreign cyberattacks on US companies.
“Today, in the face of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, we are particularly focused on the destructive cyber threat posed by the Russian intelligence agencies and cybercriminal groups that protect and support them,” FBI Director Christoper Wray told the Detroit Economic Club on Tuesday .
“We have cyber personnel working closely with the Ukrainians and our other allies abroad, as well as with the private sector and our partners here.”
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Wray cited the 2017 Russian NotPetya ransomware attack that devastated systems in the US, Europe and elsewhere, causing nearly $10 million in damage in “one of the most damaging cyberattacks in cyberattack history.”
In 2021, cyber experts linked multiple threat groups conducting attacks on the Colonial Pipeline, meat producer JBS, Microsoft and other US organizations and agencies to Russian hackers, although the exact identities and origins remain unclear. Putin denied speculation that Russia was behind the pipeline attack, which caused gas shortages on the east coast for several days until the energy company paid a ransom of about $4 million.
Gas prices displayed at a Mobil gas station in West Hollywood, California on March 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C Hong)
Antani added that there are certain activities that would cross the threshold of war, such as a cyber attack on a health or transportation system that would result in loss of life.
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These activities are therefore likely “not high on the list” for nation-states like Russia. Antani reckons Russian cyberattacks are likely to cause “discomfort, internal strife and anger” rather than loss of life, given Putin’s unwillingness to cross the threshold of war in attacks on NATO countries.
If Russia is already synchronizing high gas prices with a cyberattack similar to that against the Colonial Pipeline, Americans would be seriously harassed with record high gas prices.
The Russian flag on a laptop screen and Guy Fawkes mask can be seen in this multiple exposure illustrative photo taken on March 1, 2022 in Kraków, Poland. (Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Such an attack would cause so much “internal strife and distraction” that it could divert attention from Russia to the US internal conflict, Antani said.
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According to Antani, US companies should actively strengthen their cyber defenses and test their systems so that they are prepared in the event of a cyber attack by a foreign adversary, similar to protecting the perimeter of a property threatened by an attack.
He also encourages partnerships between the public and private sectors in “collaborating at an operational level, whether that’s sharing threat intelligence, sharing fixes or patch recommendations, or even sharing code and alerts, and so on.”