Cyberattacks: Biden challenges Russia on critical infrastructure hacks ‘off-limits’

*The American and Russian leaders discuss the possibilities of minimising the emerging tension and threat of destructive hacks aimed at critical infrastructure in both countries at a recent summit in Geneva

Gbenga Kayode | ConsumerConnect

Aside from the conventional digital espionage operations being carried out by intelligence agencies worldwide, United States President Joe Biden has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin with a proposal focused on carving out ‘safe zones’ for the American critical infrastructure in view of certain ‘destructive’ hacks purportedly from Russia.

ConsumerConnect gathered President Biden had told President Putin at a slated summit of the two leaders Wednesday, June 16 in Geneva, Switzerland, that certain critical infrastructure should be “off-limits” to cyberattacks.

However, analysts have opined that the US President’s efforts in this regard were unlikely to be more successful than previous attempts to carve out safe zones in the cyberspace (online).

It was not explicit about which areas Biden wanted out of bounds, but spoke of 16 kinds of infrastructure – an apparent reference to the 16 sectors designated as critical by the US Homeland Security Department, including telecommunications, healthcare, food and energy.

“We agreed to task experts in both our countries to work on specific understandings about what is off-limits.

“We’ll find out whether we have a cybersecurity arrangement that begins to bring some order,” Biden stated after the lakeside summit with Putin Wednesday in Geneva.

An American senior administration official also disclosed said that the proposal was focused on ‘destructive’ hacks, as against the conventional digital espionage operations carried out by intelligence agencies all over the world.

Agency report noted that Putin’s response to Biden’s idea was not immediately clear.

The official in a separate press conference said the two leaders had agreed to “begin consultations” on cybersecurity issues, but did not directly refer to Biden’s proposal.

It is noted that the threat of destructive hacks aimed at critical infrastructure, a staple of disaster movies where renegade hackers trigger blackouts and mayhem, have long worried experts.

The United States was said to have had its first serious taste of what that might mean early May 2021, when ransom-seeking cybercriminals momentarily triggered the closure of a major Colonial Pipeline network in the US, resulting in interruptions in gasoline deliveries and sparking panic-buying up and down the East Coast of the country.

Earlier cyberattacks aimed at the Ukrainian power grid and a Saudi petrochemical plant have also drawn concern to cybersecurity experts lately.

In all those cases, report stated that the hackers involved are accused by the United States of either working directly for the Russian Government or from Russian territory. Nevertheless, Russian officials have repeatedly denied carrying out or tolerating cyberattacks, and President Putin made no concessions on the issue at the Wednesday meeting.

The Russian President told reporters, that “we need to throw out all kinds of insinuations, sit down at the expert level and start working in the interests of the United States and Russia.”

According him, Russian officials had tracked malicious digital activity coming from the United States.

He noted: “We certainly see where the attacks are coming from. We see that this work is coordinated from US cyberspace.”

Experts were skeptical that Biden’s proposal would be taken seriously by Putin.

Keir Giles, a Russia expert with the London-based Chatham House think tank, said: “There’s no indication at all that he actually went along with it,”

Giles stated that grappling with the cyberthreat emerging from Russia would require “an outbreak of honesty” on the Kremlin’s side.

“There’s no indication – at least from Putin’s public comments so far – that that outbreak has begun,” he stated.