Nestlé says that the incident is not a cyber attack by Anonymous but an internal data leak, with the information being errantly published to the public-facing web for some weeks.
The international community is under no illusion regarding the persistent threat that is posed by Russian hackers as the U.S. Department of Justice indicts 7 Russian GRU members, and other nations including the U.K. and the Netherlands protest hacking activities.
The White House said that there is "no certainty" that there will be a cyber attack from Russia, but that the country is exploring options to target US critical infrastructure and that companies should harden cyber defenses.
US and UK have dispatched cyber warfare advisors to Ukraine to prepare for potential cyber attacks. The prospect is not unprecedented, as Russia has disabled Ukrainian power stations before.
The destructive malware that is currently being spread in Ukraine acts like ransomware in that it locks up target systems by encrypting key files, but there is no payment option.
Ukraine's major internet provider Triolan suffered two severe cyber attacks disrupting internet services in what it described as the "vile strategy of the enemy."
While Presidents Putin and Biden still appear to be far apart on the issue of cyber attacks originating from the former's country, the two at least appear to be negotiating. Biden presented Putin with a list of critical infrastructure targets that could trigger serious retaliation.
Several Bellingcat journalists’ ProtonMail accounts were targeted in a recent phishing attack linked to Russia. The targets were the reporters who broke the names of Russian operatives believed to be behind MH17 attack and Skripal poisoning.
Yandex warded off the largest DDoS attack in history recorded at 22 million requests per second and attributed to a new botnet Meris that exploits MikroTik devices.
President Joe Biden warned Vladimir Putin that there would be consequences for ransomware attacks launched from Russia even if they were not sanctioned by the Kremlin.
