The White House has announced the formation of a specific task force to determine not just appropriate moves to defend against hackers utilizing ransomware, but also offense actions to prevent and retaliate against those hackers, Politico reports.
Anne Neuberger, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, will lead the task force, which will draw on the skills, intelligence and resources of multiple federal agencies from within the US intelligence community, as well as all federal agencies’ IS/IT operations.
The task force will develop ways to defend government systems, critical infrastructure, and private companies from malware attacks, including ways to recover from an attack.
The group will also develop techniques and prerequisite conditions that could trigger a preemptive strike against a planned attack, as well as ways to retaliate against successful attacks and methods to recover lost data.
Interestingly, the Russian hacker group REvel has apparently dissolved. It’s website was taken off-line as were the various unique sites used to communicate to the companies it attacked to arranged payment. This happened about a week after a phone call in which Biden laid out consequences if the Kremlin did not get Russian hackers under control.