Emily Harding, Riley McCabe, James Andrew Lewis write for CSIS: On July 2, as U.S. offices prepared to close down for the long weekend in celebration of July 4, businesses around the world were hit by the single biggest ransomware attack on record. A cybercriminal group, REvil, is demanding $50 million to restore victims’ data, after using a one-two-three punch of a zero-day vulnerability, a supply chain hack, and a ransomware encryption program. While recovery is underway for an estimated 1,500 affected businesses, the real test is still to come: whether Russia will take action against a ransomware group that uses its territory as a safe haven and, if not, whether the Biden administration will follow through on tougher rhetoric about retaliation. In a press conference on Tuesday, July 6, White House press secretary Jen Psaki reinforced that rhetoric, saying, “if the Russian government cannot or will not take action against criminal actors residing in Russia, we will take action or reserve the right to take action on our own.”
go to the analysis: Kaseya Ransomware Attack Demands Action to Match Rhetoric | Center for Strategic and International Studies (csis.org)
