Officials from the White House, US intelligence agencies, and the Department of Homeland Security met via video link on Friday to discuss responses to a potential wave of hacking, given the ongoing tensions between NATO and Russia, CNN has reported, citing its customary anonymous sources.
The meeting focused on how agencies can work with companies in critical sectors of the economy in order to tackle cyberattacks, the network said. Two sources allegedly told the channel that officials specifically talked about a possible increase in ransomware attack by “Russian-speaking criminal gangs.”
Another topic was assistance to Ukraine, whose government websites were temporarily brought down by hackers last month. A source was quoted as saying that there was a “specific, credible threat” to Ukrainian infrastructure, but not to US infrastructure.