It S Tuesday Night In Kyiv. Here S What You Need To Know.

In a letter to Biden on CNN on Tuesday, Sen. Ed Markey and Bill Bill Keating, both from Massachusetts, expressed concern that Russia could launch further cyber-attacks on Ukraine or try piracy. NATO as Russian military progress in Ukraine stall. A cyber attack last week on Ukrtelecom, which claims to be Ukraine’s largest fixed-line internet and telephone provider, reportedly toppled the telecommunications provider at 13% of its pre-war levels. Lawmakers, both members of their respective chamber foreign affairs committees, want a newly established State Department cybersecurity office to strengthen U.S. cooperation with Ukraine and European cybersecurity allies, and in turn help with defense. against Russian hacking threats. A spokesman for Markey’s office described the $ 37 million request from the White House for Congress to run the office in 2023 as a “strong starting point,” but said it was “imperative” that the State Department coordinate with government agencies such as US Cyber ​​Administration. and the Ministry of Internal Security, which have long been providing cyber assistance in Ukraine. CNN turned to the White House for comment. Regardless of the new office, the State Department has overseen millions of dollars in aid to Kyiv to support its networks in recent years. And the head of the US Cyber ​​Administration, the army’s hacker unit, said on Tuesday that the administration had sent a team of cyber experts to Ukraine late last year to help defend Ukrainian infrastructure. More on hacks: While there have been a number of Russian-linked piracy incidents against Ukrainian organizations since the start of the war, there has not been the level of annoying hacks in critical infrastructure that some analysts feared.
An exception was a cyber attack at the start of the war that shut down the Internet service for tens of thousands of satellite modems in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe. U.S. officials are investigating the incident as a possible Russian-funded Russian hack, CNN reported earlier. On March 21, Biden warned U.S. business executives that “the size of Russia’s cyber capabilities is quite important and is coming.” the probability. Markey and Keating asked Biden to “immediately” appoint an ambassador general to head the State Department’s new cybersecurity office. (Secretary of State Anthony Blinken told State Department officials on Monday that Biden would nominate someone for the role “very soon.”) Democrat lawmakers also want to know what lessons the Biden administration has learned from Russian hacking in Ukraine in recent weeks. “How does the government coordinate US government agencies to implement these courses to support potential US vulnerabilities as well as those of our allies and partners?” Markie and Keating wrote to Biden asking for answers by April 29.