Cyber

“We have to keep our shields up,” said Neal Higgins, the deputy national cyber director for national cybersecurity. “We can’t let our guard down.”

“The threat environment isn’t getting any less dynamic, less complex, less dangerous,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. And the “threat actors are not getting any less sophisticated.”

“We are a different force today than we were even four years ago, when I took over,” Gen. Paul Nakasone said, addressing a House Armed Services subcommittee April 5.

“Russia is one of the two most capable cyber adversaries we face globally. Whether they have the ability to completely destabilize our country and win a war is a whole different conversation.”

“As I said, the magnitude of Russia’s cyber capacity is fairly consequential, and it’s coming,” President Joe Biden said March 21.

Russia’s combined air, land and sea assault on Ukraine was preceded by waves of cyberattacks, the sort of gray-zone meddling analysts and defense officials had foreseen. Websites were hamstrung. Malware coursed through computers. Communications were hampered. But the efforts were not crippling.

“You can have the biggest force in the world. If it’s not survivable, if it can’t get into the place that it needs to get in to and fight, then it’s really not doing you too much good.”

Hackers have exploited mistakes on Navy and private, at-home networks by stealing or guessing passwords and other credentials, furtively installing malware, and posing as service members or veterans to pry information out of people.