Russia could launch cyberattacks across the country after Ukraine military action pushback

According to a memo from the Department of Homeland Security, Russia could potentially launch cyberattacks across the United States in response to President Joe Biden's reported consideration of sending thousands of U.S. troops to the Baltic states bordering Russia over concerns that Moscow is planning military action in Ukraine, Newsweek reports.

"Russia maintains a range of offensive cyber tools that it could employ against US networks — from low-level denial of-service to destructive attacks targeting critical infrastructure," the memo stated. "However, we assess that Russia's threshold for conducting disruptive or destructive cyber attacks in the Homeland probably remains very high and we have not observed Moscow directly employ these types of cyber attacks against US critical infrastructure — notwithstanding cyber espionage and potential prepositioning operations in the past."

Speaking to Newsweek, retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman said that the U.S. is already seeing "the risks in a full-spectrum type of scenario, starting out kind of low-end with regards to cyber operations, those risks are increasing."

"Once the shots are fired, there is no putting the genie back in the bottle," Vindman said.

An alleged cyber attack hit Ukraine earlier this month, but Russian officials denied that their government was behind the incident.

Read more at Newsweek.