Biden threatens Putin with a ‘retaliatory strike’ over inaction on hackers

U.S. President Joe Biden urged Vladimir Putin to stop ransomware attacks on American companies carried out from Russian territory. сообщает New York Times.

In a phone call, Mr. Biden said that the hackers’ actions would be treated as a threat to national security and would trigger a far harsher United States response.

“I made it very clear to him that the United States expects Russia to identify the identities of the ransomware operators, even if they are not backed by the state,” he told reporters.

Later, Mr. Biden answered in the affirmative when asked about the possibility of U.S. retaliation against the servers that Russian cybercriminals used to breach American networks. Officials did not rule out that this could also involve freezing hackers’ bank accounts and seizing their cryptocurrency wallets.

The president issued the ultimatum soon after REvil ransomware attack on the American software developer Kaseya, which affected thousands of companies. The operators of the malware, according to U.S. authorities, are linked to Russia.

Earlier in May, the DarkSide attacked the Colonial Pipeline operator, blocking its computer systems and stealing data. The company paid the attackers 75 BTC for restoring operations.

Later, the FBI returned 63.7 BTC from these funds, gaining access to the Bitcoin wallet.

In the same month, the world’s largest meatpacking компания JBS, fell victim to REvil. It paid a ransom of $11 million in Bitcoin.

To combat hackers, Joe Biden proposed tracking cryptocurrency transactions.

According to media reports, investigations into ransomware attacks in the United States have the same priority as terrorism cases.

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