Officials warn of cyber attacks in response to Russia sanctions

U.S. officials are warning of potential Russian-­instigated cyber attacks as it faces increasing economic and other international sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine.

Members of Congress received a briefing Friday from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas, FBI Director Christopher Wray and others warning of the heigh-tened risk of Russian hacking.

After the briefing, U.S. Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii, urged all Hawaii state and county governments, businesses and residents to be on the alert for unusual or suspicious activity on their computers and other internet­connected devices.

“The bottom line is that we should fully expect and prepare for Russia and individuals and entities associated with Russia to engage in cyberwarfare across the world, as they are already doing in Ukraine and have done in our country and elsewhere in the world,” Case said in a news release. “This is just as true in Hawaii as anywhere else in our country … cyberattacks do not care about physical locations.”

Both the federal government and state agencies have been pouring resources into beefing up cyber security in Hawaii in recent years. Federal agencies have been putting stricter cyber security guidelines in place for contractors hoping to work on government projects, including requiring third-party certification that they are complying with the measures.

Local cyber security company Referentia Systems Inc. launched the Hawaii Defense Economy Cyber Compliance Education Program in 2021 under a contract with the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism to offer education on the requirements companies must abide by to maintain and win new contracts, particularly those with the U.S. military.

DBEDT also worked with CyberHawaii, a nonprofit aimed at educating Hawaii leaders and residents about cyber security, to launch a state-funded program dubbed Cyber Ready Hawaii to provide free training to businesses and nonprofits in partnership with the Cyber Readiness Institute.

Hawaii is home to several critical military facilities and organizations, including U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Pacific Fleet on Oahu and the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai. Russian spy ships have frequently made their way to the islands to spy on training and operations, including a ship the U.S. military tracked as recently as January.

The U.S. military’s large presence here means its networks are interconnected with a number of government agencies, businesses and other institutions.

Notably, the Navy partially funds the University of Hawaii’s Applied Research Lab, which develops both civilian and military technology and has taken on top- secret projects. The military also relies on the state’s electrical grids to support day-to-day operations, though it has been investing in backup systems.

“We should also not assume that the targets are just governments and businesses with key infrastructure roles. The intent of cyber warfare is to disrupt economies and societies across a broad range and so nobody is immune,” Case said in the release. “Unfortunately, this is the reality of instability and conflict in a modern world so dependent on technology.”

Concerns about cyber attacks are nothing new. Government agencies and transnational criminal groups alike have hacked and introduced viruses into systems and servers around the globe. But analysts say Russia has shown particular proficiency in the field.

In 2018 the Department of Homeland Security released a report that charged that “since at least March 2016, Russian government cyber actors … targeted government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors, including the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors.”

The report did not specifically say how effective those hacks were, but indicated the campaign “targeted small commercial facilities’ networks where they staged malware, conducted spearphishing, and gained remote access into energy sector networks.”

In January 2021 a joint task force made up of members of the FBI and other intelligence agencies investigating the hack of multiple companies and government agencies that had used Orion, a software program developed by Texas-based company SolarWinds, announced that their findings indicated the breach was “likely Russian in origin” and that “this was, and continues to be, an intelligence gathering effort.”

The latest Russian offensive in Ukraine came after the two countries had engaged in a grinding low-­intensity conflict since 2014 in Ukraine’s east, when Russia invaded and annexed the Crimea region. Over the past two months Russia moved troops and tanks to Ukraine’s northern border and ships into the Black Sea, encircling the country.

Before Russian President Vladimir Putin formally announced the large-scale offensive last week and bombs began falling on Ukrainian cities, hackers targeted the websites of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Ukrainian bank PrivatBank. The attacks flooded the targets’ servers with connection requests, causing them to seize up as they would if millions of genuine users tried to log on at once.

“We have some of the most advanced cyber operations in the world,” Case said. “But others like Russia have long known that one key way to wage war is in the cyber realm and they have no hesitation to do so.”