Vladimir Putin tests Joe Biden’s resolve with salvo of cyberattacks

The US president summoned his top cyberteam to the White House as America scrambled to respond to two worrying attacks.

Joe Biden returns to the White House from Illinois. Picture: AFP

US President Biden summoned his top cyberteam to the White House on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) as America scrambled to respond to two worrying attacks in the past week blamed on Russian hackers.

Mr Biden, 78, faces growing pressure to act after it emerged that Synnex, an IT firm working for the Republican National Committee, the body that runs the party, was hacked by suspected agents backed by the Kremlin.

It is believed to have taken place on Friday, at about the same time as a ransomware raid on Kaseya, a Florida IT company, which crippled the operations of as many as 1500 companies in 17 countries. REvil, a Russian-linked criminal group, has demanded $US70m ($94m) to unfreeze IT systems.

The RNC said its data had not been breached. Synnex initially said that the action “could potentially be in connection with the recent cybersecurity attacks (on Kaseya)” but later backed away from that claim. Instead, US security agencies pointed the finger at the SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service.

“We immediately blocked all access from Synnex accounts to our cloud environment,” said Richard Walters, the RNC’s chief of staff. “After a thorough investigation, no RNC data was accessed.”

The FBI, which is investigating the Kaseya hack, said it was aware of the Synnex attack and had “no additional comment”.

The attack on the RNC raises the stakes, however. During their summit in Geneva last month, Mr Biden warned President Vladimir Putin that there would be consequences if Moscow continued to allow hackers operating from Russia to attack companies and other bodies operating in 16 areas of “key infrastructure”.

Mr Biden’s opponents seized on the comments, arguing that they gave the Kremlin carte blanche to attack targets outside those categories. “We’re facing a moment of reckoning when it comes to ­deterrence,” said John Katko, a Republican member of the House of Representatives homeland security committee. “Adversaries like Russia are creating safe havens for bad actors and we must project strength.”

Others argue that Mr Putin, by allowing these hacks to continue, is increasing the pressure on Mr Biden. “At this point, the Biden administration’s credibility is on the line about not tolerating these attacks,” Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator think tank, told The Washington Post. “Events are forcing their hand.”

Asked as he left the White House on Wednesday whether he had a message for Putin, Mr Biden said: “I will deliver it to him.”

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the meeting of ­officials from the State Department, Homeland Security, Justice Department and intelligence was on a “whole-of-government effort to address ransomware attacks”.

“The President has a range of options should he determine to take action” against attackers, she added.

The President had been eager to play down the significance of the Kaseya hack on Tuesday, saying: “It appears to have caused minimal damage to US businesses but we’re still gathering information to the full extent of the attack.” He added that he would “have more to say about this in the next several days. I feel good about our ability to be able to respond.”

Ms Psaki said that a “high-level” meeting between US and Russian officials to discuss the Kaseya attack would take place next week. “If the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors in Russia, we will take action … on our own,” she said.

Washington blamed the Russian intelligence services for a cyber attack on the Democrat National Committee before the 2016 presidential election, in what it concluded was an ­attempt to help Donald Trump win. Russian government agents were also blamed for the hack of the software company SolarWinds, which compromised the systems of thousands of global organisations and went undiscovered for months.

The Times