US ramping up digital attacks on Russia’s power grid: report

The U.S. is reportedly ramping up attacks on Russia’s electric power grid. 

The move is a warning to Moscow of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to unleash cybertools in a more aggressive manner, The New York Times reported Saturday, citing current and former government officials. 

The officials told the newspaper that the U.S. was deploying computer code within Russia’s grid and other targets along with other actions to combat Russian disinformation and hacking in the 2018 elections. {mosads}

Proponents of the action reportedly said it was warranted given alerts from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI that Russia had inserted malware that could hurt U.S. power plants, oil and gas pipelines and water supplies. 

The administration did not tell The Times specifically what it was doing under the new authorities that were given to the U.S. Cyber Command by the White House and Congress last year.  

The Cyber Command is the Defense Department branch that coordinates the military’s online operations. The Hill has reached out to the Defense Department for comment. 

“It has gotten far, far more aggressive over the past year,” one senior intelligence official told The Times. “We are doing things at a scale that we never contemplated a few years ago.” 

Two administration officials told The Times that they did not think President Tump was informed in detail about the move to put implants, code that can be used to surveil or attack, in the Russian grid. 

The newspaper reported that power grids have been a place of battle for several years. 

The Times also noted that national security adviser John Bolton said publicly on Tuesday that the U.S. was more widely looking at digital targets in an attempt  “to say to Russia, or anybody else that’s engaged in cyberoperations against us, ‘You will pay a price.’”

The Defense Department declined to comment. But President Trump, denied the report on Twitter. 

He decried The Times’ reporting as “a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story.”

…..ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2019