“In a globally connected world, conflicts are no longer geographically isolated. As DHS is warning, Russia may respond to U.S. actions in support of Ukraine by using offensive cyber tools against U.S. networks,” Rosenzweig told USA TODAY. “We have seen how vulnerable American systems are – think of the criminals who disrupted gas pipelines and meat packing last year. Now imagine that an angry Russia decides to take it to the next level – wastewater treatment; agriculture; transportation are all potential targets.”
If Russia were to launch such a cyberattack against U.S. targets, Washington would likely retaliate with defense or even offensive cyberweapons of its own. And that could trigger a potentially dangerous escalation that could threaten to draw the United States directly into the conflict between Russia and its neighbor Ukraine.
“That’s why the Russian attack on Ukraine is so dangerous,” Rosenzweig said. “It seems quite possible that the conflict will spin out of control – both on the ground and in the cyber universe.”
In its memo, DHS said Russian government cyber actors have spent years targeting and gaining access to critical infrastructure in the United States. In one particularly alarming campaign, Russian hackers have compromised U.S. energy networks since at least 2016, conducted network reconnaissance and collected the kind of information needed to gain control of those systems if they wanted to, it said.
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