Over the years, the US- Russian ties have been in fluctuation mode. Donald Trump, the former US president was lenient towards Kremlin from 2017-2020 during which the White House seemed to take a backseat to cybersecurity issues.
However, the Joe Biden regime is ready to take on Russia on every possible front. After Russia invaded Ukraine last February, the American-led European Union moved blocked RT and Sputnik, two of the Kremlin’s top channels for spreading misinformation about the war.
Blake Dowling, CEO at Florida- based Aegis Business Technologies blamed Russian-backed hackers for staging cyberattacks against American infrastructure (Colonial Pipeline), businesses and government (SolarWinds and others), and elections.
According to Dowling, Russian Internet Research Agency has also played in propagating disinformation around the globe.
The IRA is an army of internet trolls based in an old arms factory in St Petersburg founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin.
The internet operatives in IRA work as regular employees during their shifts of 8 hours per day.
During their shifts employees must meet quotas which would be something like designing a dozen social media accounts, and posting five political posts and 10 nonpolitical posts. At the same time, they must comment and like hundreds of their colleague’s posts.
One IRA employee published a blog about a new video game in the U.S. that had a theme of slavery, aiming to stir up anti-U.S. feelings in Russia. In reality, there was no such game, but that is what the job was.
Apart from social media trolls, a Russian hacktivist group called Killnet is also playing a major role in disrupting services in the United States. They are looking to cause chaos to the enemies of Russia, specifically those entities that side with Ukraine.
The standard modus operandi of the hacking group is to launch distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) toward their victims, causing their web presence to break down. Earlier targets include the European song contest Eurovision and this month fourteen airports in the United States.
To counter this cyber onslaught, the Department of Homeland Security and Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency recommends a Shields Up approach for American citizens.
The Shield Up technique refers to a heightened cyber defensive posture when protecting data and technical assets. This includes updating your network and hardware for known exploits and vulnerabilities and using robust passwords that are changed regularly.