Senator Tom Cotton was speaking after a cyberattack linked to a group of Russian-speaking hackers shut down most of a major US oil pipeline early this week, the nypost.com website reported.
Colonial Pipeline, which delivers about 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the US East Coast, halted operations late last week after revealing a ransomware attack that had affected some of its systems, nypost.com said.
The website reported that the FBI on Monday identified a criminal syndicate named DarkSide as creators of the ransomware used in the attack.
The group’s members are Russian speakers, and their malware is coded not to attack networks using Russian-language keyboards, according to nypost.com.
'Attack against critical infrastructure'
The website cited Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, as saying that “no cyber-gang in Russia can conduct this kind of attack against an American piece of critical infrastructure without the tacit or explicit knowledge of Vladimir Putin’s government.”
He added, as quoted by nypost.com: “It shows that Joe Biden’s weak policy on Russia is having consequences for the American people.”
'You just embolden Vladimir Putin'
Cotton, who is a member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, also bashed Biden for failing to stop Russia from building the contested Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany under the Baltic Sea, a nearly completed energy project opposed by a host of countries including Poland, Polish website biznesalert.pl has noted.
“When you give away the store to Russia, when you extend a nuclear arms treaty that favors Russia over the United States, you allow Russia to build a gas pipeline to Germany under the Baltic Sea, when you invite Vladimir Putin to a summit … you just embolden Vladimir Putin and his minions to launch these kinds of attacks on the US …,” Cotton said, according to nypost.com.
(gs/pk)
Source: biznesalert.pl, nypost.com