New Delhi: The FBI has cautioned against a possible hacking attempt by Russian hackers as they have been found to be scanning the networks of five US energy firms. The alert to the industry comes in the wake of a possible state-sponsored hacking attempt by Russia that poses a "current" threat to American national security, a top FBI official told lawmakers, the media has reported.
"The threat from Russia in a criminal sense, in the nation-state sense, is very, very real - and current," Bryan Vorndran, an assistant director in the FBI's cyber division, during a hearing before a US House of Representatives panel, was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters.
The United States Department of Justice has been cautioning US-based companies about the intelligence of possible cyberattacks from Russian state-sponsored hackers and that they have been taking early steps towards launching attacks.
The FBI issued the notice days before US President Joe Biden publicly warned that Russian hackers could target US firms as the Russian military continues to suffer heavy losses in Ukraine and as Western sanctions on the Kremlin begin to hurt.
Earlier in 2021, well before Russia's war on Ukraine, Biden had openly warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that certain critical infrastructure should be "off-limits" to cyberattacks. That warning applied to 16 different kinds of infrastructure -- an apparent reference to the 16 sectors designated as critical by the US Homeland Security Department, including telecommunications, healthcare, food as well as energy.