U.S. Says 'Staying Vigilant' To Watch Out For Russian Cyber Attack Activity In Europe

The Biden administration's top cyber diplomat says that the United States and its NATO partners 'are vigilant' in observing, watching out for any Russian cyber attack activity in Europe,

After a mostly quiet spring, it’s already been an eventful past few weeks for cyber espionage in Europe. In the run-up to major elections, Germany, Czech Republic and other European countries have revealed that they had been caught up in Russian hacks at different levels.

The attacks by Russia also continue to grow bolder and larger in scope as the Kremlin seeks to expand its war against Ukraine and its supporters across different fronts.

"I don’t think there’s much new here," Nate Fick, ambassador at large, who leads the State Department's Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, told TURAN's correspondent during a briefing organized by the Department's Washington Foreign Press Center.

According to him, Russia has been an egregious violator of the framework for responsible state behavior in cyberspace "in many ways, for a long time, including clearly documented interference in the U.S. election back in 2016". 

"Obviously, in the wake of Russia’s further invasion of Ukraine, tension in Europe has only become more acute. Russia launched – has used significant cyber attacks and disruption inside Ukraine," he added.

Fick went on to explain that,  public-private partnership among the Ukrainian Government, the U.S. Government, and others, and technology companies has gone a long way toward blunting or mitigating the effects of those attacks. "And a couple of concrete examples I would give you are the migration of the Ukrainian Government’s enterprise to the cloud and the threat intel feedback sharing loop among the U.S. Government and the Ukrainian Government, NATO governments, and technology providers with a lot of infrastructure on the ground in Ukraine that has enabled them to push patches and updates and to blunt the effects of Russian cyber attacks in Ukraine."

As for other parts of Europe, the ambassador highlighted the Russian attack on the ViaSat satellite network back around the time of the further invasion, saying that the U.S. and NATO partners remain "vigilant".

"I think the U.S. and the NATO Alliance have made very clear that cyber attacks on NATO Allies are completely unacceptable and would potentially trigger significant consequences... And NATO stands ready to defend every inch of NATO territory, both in the physical world and also in the digital domain," he concluded.