Russia is at it again. And they don’t care if it’ll affect everyday people.
That’s FBI Director Christopher Way’s warning about cyber campaigns against the United States by Russia, and even China, to disrupt critical infrastructure.
“Like China, Russia continues to target critical infrastructure, including things like underwater cables and industrial control systems, both in the United States and around the world. And since its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we’ve seen Russia conducting reconnaissance on the U.S. energy sector. Now, adding to that concern is that the Russians, like our other adversaries, don’t care if their cyber campaigns affect civilians,” Wray said.
Last year, The Justice Department said that it had disrupted a long-running Russian cyberespionage campaign that infected computer networks in dozens of countries, including in the United States, and resulted in the theft of sensitive information from governments.
Prosecutors linked the spying operation to a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, and accused the hackers of stealing documents from hundreds of computer systems belonging to governments of NATO members, an unidentified journalist for a U.S. news organization who reported on Russia, and other select targets of interest to the Kremlin.
“For 20 years, the FSB has relied on the Snake malware to conduct cyberespionage against the United States and our allies — that ends today,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.
U.S. officials also warned nearly 100 countries last year that Russian intelligence is opening a new front in its efforts to destabilize democracies by amplifying doubts about the legitimacy of vote-counting and elections, senior government officials said Friday.
Russia has long advocated overtly and covertly for candidates it backs to win elections in other countries, but intelligence officials say they have recently identified a new tactic — sowing doubts about the reliability of democracy itself.
Russia appears encouraged by its success in amplifying the lies by former President Donald Trump and his supporters during and after the 2020 presidential election falsely blaming widespread fraud for his loss. Those lies helped spark the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and continue to resonate to this day.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Stories by Matt Arco
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Matt Arco may be reached at marco@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @MatthewArco.