Russia was not invited to the White House's big meeting that tackled fighting ransomware. The meeting was reportedly done with ministers and officials from 30 different nations and the European Union to discuss how to fight ransomware and other cyber threats.
United States Did Not Invite Russia to White House-Led Group
According to the story by ZDNet, the whole two-day series of meetings now seeks to find an answer towards ransomware. This reportedly follows calls coming from the United States president to hold certain Russia-based ransomware gangs accountable for their own file-encrypting attacks. Instead of turning a blind eye to them, this is as long as they don't actually attack Russian organizations.
Russia was not invited to the White House-led group. In June 2021, the U.S. president told the Russian president that 16 different U.S. critical infrastructure entities should remain off-limits from ransomware attackers operating from Russia. The whole aim of the talk is to figure out an international approach to disrupt and even ultimately stop certain ransomware attacks.
Russia and U.S. Discussions
In two days of this virtual talk, India is said to lead discussions regarding resilience, while Australia is currently focused on how to disrupt certain cyberattacks. The U.K.'s own contribution focused on virtual currency, and Germany is discussing diplomacy.
Other countries are involved, including France, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Ukraine, Israel, and South Africa. Although Russian officials were not president, a White House spokesperson noted that the U.S. is in ongoing discussions with Russia through the U.S.-Kremlin Experts Group.
White House Fuel Distribution
This was reportedly led by the White House and was established by both presidents of the U.S. and Russia. One of the most disruptive ransomware attacks on U.S. infrastructure was against the Colonial Pipeline. This is what halted fuel distribution on the U.S. east coast for a whole week in May 2021.
The company has reportedly paid the equivalent of a whopping $4.4 million in bitcoin for the decryption tool provided by the attackers. The FBI blamed the massive Colonial attack on DarkSide. The colonial pipeline ransomware attack reportedly gave fear of a gas shortage of 100GB worth of data.
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DarkSide Ransomware Gang
The group went offline shortly after but reportedly resurfaced in June 2021. This is according to FireEye's incident response unit known as Mandiant. DarkSide is currently one of a number of ransomware gangs that are operating as a service provider. This would allow other criminal gangs to use its very own software to extort certain targets.
Others, which include Revil, steal data as well as threaten to leak it online if the said ransom was not paid. The other major threat that the U.S. president has raised concerns regarding nation-state cyber attackers. The cyber attack on the largest fuel pipeline caused the U.S. to declare a state of emergency.
Related Article: Australia Ransomware Action Plan Sees to Collect Data from Compromised Organizations and Requires Them to Report
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by Urian B.
