Russia was not invited to the big White House meeting devoted to the fight against ransomware. The meeting was reportedly held with ministers and officials from 30 different countries and the European Union to discuss how to tackle ransomware and other cyber threats.
According to ZDNet’s story, the entire two-day dating series is now trying to find an answer to the ransomware. This would follow calls from the President of the United States, Joe Biden, to hold certain Russian-based ransomware gangs accountable for their own file encryption attacks. Instead of turning a blind eye to them, it’s until they actually attack Russian organizations.
Russia was not invited to the White House group. However, in June 2021, the President of the U.S. told the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, that 16 different critical infrastructure entities from the U.S. should remain off-limits.
White House Meet; Russia uninvited
The objective of the conference is to find an international approach to stop and even stop certain ransomware attacks. But, in two days of this virtual speech, India is reportedly leading discussions on resilience, while Australia is currently focused on preventing some cyber-attacks.
The U.S. contribution has 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 present in the meeting, a White House spokesman noted that the United States was in talks with Russia through the British Kremlin Panel. It would have been led by the White House and put in place by the Presidents of the United States and Russia.
https://twitter.com/ImAbuSayed/status/1448651287210254339
One of the most disruptive ransomware attacks against U.S. infrastructure has been directed against the colonial pipeline. This is what halted the distribution of fuel on the east coast for an entire week in May 2021.
U.S. Discussion with Russia
The company reportedly paid the equivalent of $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 raised concerns about a gas shortage of 100 GB of data.
The group went offline shortly after but reportedly resurfaced in June 2021, according to FireEye’s incident response unit known as Mandiant. DarkSide is currently one of several ransomware groups operating as a service provider.
This would allow other criminal gangs to use their software to extort certain targets. Others, including Revil, steal data and threaten to disclose it online if the aforementioned ransom has not been paid.
The other major threat raised by the U.S. president concerns cyber attackers of nation-states. The cyberattack on the world’s largest pipeline prompted the United States to declare a state of emergency.