National Security Agency Cyber Director Rob Joyce said Thursday he remains concerned about significant cyberattacks from Russia, warning that Moscow could unleash digital assaults on the global energy sector in the coming months.
“I would not encourage anyone to be complacent or be unconcerned about the threats to the energy sector globally,” Joyce said. “As the [Ukraine] war progresses there’s certainly the opportunities for increasing pressure on Russia at the tactical level, which is going to cause them to reevaluate, try different strategies to extricate themselves.”
The remarks came as Joyce briefed reporters about the agency’s annual year in review report, which focuses in part on Russian cyberattacks in Ukraine. Joyce said NSA has seen “spillover” from Ukrainian hacks to neighboring countries and particularly Poland due to its status as a supply channel to Ukraine.
The report portrays cyberspace as a critical domain in the Ukraine war and notes that in the weeks leading up to and following Russia’s invasion at least seven new families of destructive data wipers were used.
“There’s been an enormous amount of activity … any one of which were one bad compromise away from Colonial Pipeline, GPS level headline grabbing things,” Joyce said. He added that there were “some really heinous intrusions across 2022 as well.”
Russian threats extended beyond Ukraine, the report said, with hacktivists targeting the defense industrial base and even NATO, whose communications and weapons systems “were in thecrosshairs of our adversaries.”
The report also focused on the cyber director warns russia digital assaults global energy sector
