Putin Punks America

May 13, 2021

Does anybody really believe that the massive cyberattack that shut down America’s biggest oil pipeline this week was done by a gang of extortionists who don’t pick on non-profits and give some of their money away to charity?

That was the explanation offered up by the FBI. Another government spokesman claimed the perpetrator was a non-state player. Then the mainstream media duly parroted both, along with details about the culprit – a criminal gang of hackers (likely Russian) calling themselves DarkSide.

memegenerator

The truth is this cyberattack, the second colossal one against America in months, has Vladimir Putin’s fingerprints all over it. To listen to the feds, it was perpetrated by an independent criminal group called DarkSide out of Russia that shakes down companies — and not an arm of Putin’s Foreign Intelligence Service which pulled last year’s massive SolarWinds cyber assault against 16,000 corporations and key U.S. government agencies such as Treasury, Commerce, Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration. 

A second attack by the Russian government against the United States would constitute another act of war and definitive evidence would be necessary to establish that before retaliatory measures could be undertaken. But the sheer audacity of this one is very Vlad, coming as it does quickly after tough sanctions and warnings issued in March and April by the Biden administration for the SolarWinds’ assault. And it looks like Putin is punking, or tricking, Biden on the eve of their planned summit in Europe to discuss how both sides can get along.

It’s also interesting to note that an attack was leveled against a U.S. pipeline just as the Biden administration is contemplating when, or how, to stop Putin’s pet project, the Nord Stream 2 undersea pipeline to Germany. The $11-billion line is essential to Russia’s future revenues and will give Russia excessive leverage over Europe by controlling much of its energy supply. Biden has hesitated to shut down the pipeline even though Congress has already passed severe penalties to do so. Now’s the time to pull the plug.

Welcome to the Cyber War of the future. Serious attacks have been underway against governments, tech companies, or defense industries in the past four years, as shown in this illustration:

Serious hacks of governments in past four years. Visualcapitalist

If this is proven to be another SolarWinds’ attack by Russia, the consequences would be dire which is why, on May 11, Biden cautiously responded when asked about the offender’s identity: "So far there is no evidence ... from our intelligence people that Russia is involved, although there is evidence that actors, ransomware is in Russia. They have some responsibility to deal with this.”

Either way, Putin is responsible. Cyber-security expert Dmitri Alperovitch said the hackers enjoyed official protection in Russia which means even this once-removed attack contains huge national security implications for America. It looks like a cybersecurity version of the “Little Green Men” special forces that Putin snuck into Crimea in 2014 to stir up phony Russian nativism against Ukraine.

But even if DarkSide is a rogue freelance outfit, Russia is involved. Mounting major hack attacks around the world from a police state like Russia is not equivalent to cooking up some meth in an empty Nevada desert somewhere beyond local police surveillance. And DarkSide’s “actors” are not amateurs, but likely graduates from military-grade ops financed by the Kremlin. Arguably, anyone in this line of work, freelance or otherwise, is there at the pleasure of Russia’s government.

But the FBI for the moment maintains that DarkSide was just a shadowy commercial operation that attempts to lock up corporate computer systems and force companies to pay to unfreeze them. Ransom demands range from $200,000 to $20 million and sources say that DarkSide’s website (only found on the Dark Net) describes itself as a “franchise” operation that makes tools for hackers who do the dirty work.

Targets in post-Soviet states are off-limits, but it goes after English-language, for-profit companies, not schools or hospitals. After its latest attack, DarkSide issued this weird statement in broken English apologizing for any social upheaval it may have caused. “We are apolitical, we do not participate in geopolitics, do not need to tie[sic] us with a defined government and look for our motives. Our goal is to make money, and not creating[sic] problems for society. From today we introduce moderation and check each company that our partners want to encrypt to avoid social consequences in the future.”

It also professes to donate a portion of profits to charities but admits that some charities have turned down its contributions, a confession about as believable as Putin’s promise to de-escalate in Ukraine or Belarus anytime soon. The hackers wrote: “No matter how bad you think our work is, we are pleased to know that we helped change someone’s life. Today we sended[sic] the first donations.”

This incomprehensible website scramble is obviously a prank. But the situation isn’t funny. Some 85 percent of America’s strategically critical infrastructure – from grids to water treatment plants, reactors, and communications -- is privately-owned, often decrepit, and undefended, even from cold weather as the collapse of the Texas grid demonstrated. America, and the West, are vulnerable from within and without.

Here are giant attacks that took place in just the first four months of 2021: Malware crashed reservation systems for 20 low-cost airlines around the world; Russians hacked Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Polish, German, British, Swedish, and NATO officials; China attacked American and European defense contractors, Vietnamese officials, and India’s transportation and power grid sectors; Iran hacked Israeli and American medical researchers; Russian and Chinese hackers attempted to steal vaccine and medicine data in Europe; North Koreans attacked Pfizer; Hezbollah hacked several telecom companies in the Middle East; and Chinese government hackers mounted ransomware attacks against five major gaming and gambling countries, garnering an estimated $100 million in ransom.

Secureworld

Apparently, the U.S. is better cyber-secured than other countries, according to the Belfer Center at Harvard University, which may explain why it hasn’t yet suffered the kind of existential attack that shut down Ukraine’s power grid or Estonia’s economy. But hacks against SolarWinds and Colonial Pipeline demonstrate an ability to pull off large-scale breaches and potentially bring the economy to its knees.

This is the Cold War 2.0 and the West cannot allow Putin to play his game of “implausible” deniability. The DarkSide operated at the pleasure of the Kremlin, one way or another. And two can play that game. Russia should be sanctioned again for harboring an attack from its soil, by any entity, and America must reciprocate by shutting down Putin’s additional pipeline to Germany and Europe once and for all.

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