We're barely a month out from the Colonial Pipeline hacking, perpetrated by the Russian-speaking hacking group DarkSide, which left thousands of Americans without gas, preventing many from accessing food or medicine.
How has President Joe Biden addressed the problem? After the Colonial Pipeline attack, he declared an executive order, calling for collaboration between the public and private sectors to iron out digital defense issues--and we learned the hard way that it will take more than that to deal with this crisis.
In mid-June, cybersecurity became a principal topic of the summit between Biden and Vladimir Putin. In a press conference, Biden said that he gave a list to Putin listing "16 specific entities; 16 defined as critical infrastructure under U.S. policy" which are "off-limits to attack." He followed this comment saying, "Of course, the principle is one thing. It has to be backed up."
We would add that responsible countries also take firm action when their citizens are endangered. We remember Biden saying in February, "I made it clear to President Putin, in a manner very different from my predecessor, that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia's aggressive actions--interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, poisoning its citizens--are over."
While the process of shutting down REvil is still in the dark, this looks like a good example of Biden backing up his words.