The Next Russian Cyber Attack Will be Far Worse

Undermining democracies...

Future Russian cyber attacks are expected to be far more sophisticated.

Editors Note: In the very near term, writes Alina Polyakova, technological advancements in artificial intelligence and cyber capabilities will open opportunities for malicious actors to undermine democracies more covertly and effectively than what we have seen so far. An all-out attack on Western critical infrastructure seems inevitable.

On March 15, the Department of Homeland Security together with the FBI 

announced that Russian government hackers infiltrated critical infrastructures in the U.S.—including “energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors,”  Alina Polyakova writes on brookings.edu.

According to the DHS-FBI report, malicious Russian activities have been ongoing since at least March 2016. The Russian malware, which has been sitting in the control systems of various U.S. utilities, allows the Russians to shut off power or sabotage the energy grids. And they have done it before: The same malware that took down Ukraine’s electrical grid in 2015 and 2016 has been detected in U.S. utilities, Polyakova reported.

The potential damage of a nationwide black out—let’s say on Election Day—would be significant, to say the least. And while Russian trolls and bots have captured public attention, they are already yesterday’s game. As I write in a recent Brookings paper, the future of political warfare is in the cyber domain, she added.

For more of a fascinating report: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/03/22/the-next-russian-attack-will-be-far-worse-than-bots-and-trolls/?utm_campaign=Brookings%20Brief&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=61599999

Photo: Giphy.

Next time on The Allen Report:
The Latest Darien Real Estate Update.