Biden’s top cybersecurity aide, Anne Neuberger, expressed frustration at a White House press briefing Monday that some critical infrastructure entities have ignored alerts from federal agencies to fix known problems in software that could be exploited by Russian hackers.
The federal government has been providing warnings to U.S. companies of the threats posed by Russian state hackers since long before the country invaded Ukraine last month. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has launched a “Shields Up” campaign aimed at helping companies strengthen their defenses and has urged companies to back up their data, turn on multifactor authentication and take other steps to improve cyber hygiene.
Neuberger said there’s no intelligence suggesting a specific Russian cyberattack against U.S. targets, but she did add that there has been increase in “preparatory activity,” like scanning websites and hunting for vulnerabilities, that is common among nation-state hackers. In a statement, Biden said Russia could launch an cyberattack against U.S. targets as retaliation for “the unprecedented economic costs we’ve imposed” on Russia through sanctions.The United States and its allies have put a