In Geneva last month, US President Joe Biden tried to set some ground rules for his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
Biden said cyber attacks on critical infrastructure were “off limits”.
“I looked at him and said how would you feel if ransomware took on the pipelines from your oil fields? He said it would matter,” said Biden.
He went on to say that if Russia violated these “basic norms” the US would retaliate.
The events of the last few days will test that claim.
On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Synnex, a third-party provider used by the Republican National Committee (RNC), had been breached last week.
In a statement, the RNC Chief of Staff Richard Walters said he did not believe the hackers had infiltrated its system.
The “supply chain” hack followed another large-scale attack that was revealed on Friday.
This time ransomware was used to infiltrate IT company Kayesa and its clients. Early estimates suggests that hundreds of businesses had their data scrambled in the hack.
The attacks were different in style, but shared one crucial similarity. They were both linked to Russia.
REvil, a profilic, Russia-linked cybercrime syndicate, took credit for the attack revealed on Friday.
The hackers demanded $70 million to restore the affected businesses’ data.
