President Biden joined European leaders this week in enacting economic sanctions against Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. The West has promised tougher sanctions are coming, but experts warn these will almost certainly trigger a Russian retaliation against America and its allies, which could escalate into cyber attacks on Western financial institutions and energy infrastructure.
Michael Daniel is a former cybersecurity advisor to the White House during the Obama administration who now heads the Cyber Threat Alliance, an industry group focused on sharing threat intelligence among members. Daniel said there are two primary types of cyber threats the group is concerned about potentially coming in response to sanctions on Russia.
The first involves what Daniel called “spillover and collateral damage” — a global malware contagion akin to a NotPeyta event — basically some type of cyber weapon that has self-propagating capabilities and may even leverage a previously unknown security flaw in a widely-used piece of hardware or software.
Russia has been suspected of releasing NotPetya, a large-scale cyberattack in 2017 initially aimed at Ukrainian businesses that mushroomed into an extremely disruptive and expensive global malware outbreak.
“The second level [is that] in retaliation for sanctions or perceived interference, Russia steps up more direct attacks on Western organizations,” Daniel said. “The Russians have shown themselves to be incredibly ingenious and creative in terms of how they come up with targets that seem to catch us by surprise. If the situation escalates in cyberspace, there could be some unanticipated organizations that end up in the crosshairs ..
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