Biden Weighs a Response to Ransomware Attacks
President Biden emerged from a Situation Room meeting with his top cybersecurity advisers on Wednesday to declare that he “will deliver” a response to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for the wave of ransomware attacks hitting American companies, after hearing a series of options about how he could disrupt the extortion efforts.
Mr. Biden’s vague statement, delivered as he was departing for a trip, left it unclear whether he was planning another verbal warning to Mr. Putin — similar to the one he issued three weeks ago during a one-on-one summit in Geneva — or would move ahead with more aggressive options to dismantle the infrastructure used by Russian-language criminal groups.
Each option runs significant risk, because Russia is capable of escalating its own behavior. And as the ransomware deluge has shown, many companies in the private sector and federal and state government agencies remain rife with vulnerabilities that Russian actors can find and exploit.
After more than three decades in government, Mr. Biden seems comparatively less concerned about hacking operations focused on espionage, activity that all countries conduct and that the United States carries out every day against its geopolitical rivals. But he has been alarmed by the economic disruption of ransomware, especially since gasoline, jet fuel and diesel shortages gripped the East Coast after a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline two months ago.
