Russian cyberattacks will target these 3 areas in Ukraine, BlackCloak CEO explains

BlackCloak CEO Chris Pierson joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss possible Russian cyberattacks on the U.S. and Ukraine and cybersecurity stocks.

Video Transcript

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: All right, want to switch gears for a moment now and talk about cyber attacks in retaliation for these new more severe sanctions. Ukraine said it suffered a cyberattack last week that was the worst of its kind in Ukrainian history thanks to Russia. And now there are warnings of a global spread of these attacks. I want to bring in Chris Pierson, CEO of BlackCloak and a former member of two Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity committees. Thanks so much for being with us, Chris. You know, I'm just curious to your mind what you think are the most vulnerable companies, governments right now that would be targeted by Vladimir Putin.

CHRIS PIERSON: Thanks. Well, you know, obviously, a lot of the attention is going to be on those items, those agencies that are actually within the Ukraine. It will probably be, you know, really, in terms of three different areas. First on the actual citizens and the folks within the Ukrainian borders in terms of psychological disinformation, information warfare campaigns. Your money is not safe. Your electricity is not safe, those types of things and a lot of propaganda. That's all going to be much more, sent much more speedily these days through social media and all the rest.

Second, you know, we're going to see a denial of use, denial of service attacks for major telecommunication internet infrastructure operators within the Ukrainian area. And third, we're going to see some destructive attacks. We are going to see things that have been long-planted malware inside of different agencies. Could be things related to aviation and defense, energy, banking, once again, internet and telecom coming to life and potentially either wiping and destroying, degrading, or even corrupting data that exists within Ukraine to allow them, to allow Russian troops and Russian operators to operate much more effectively within those borders. Could leak out beyond that.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: You know, Chris, NBC News reporting just a short time ago that President Biden has been given several options that the US can take in terms of using our own cyber weapons against Russia, perhaps maybe in a preemptive strike before we see Russia attacked some of our infrastructure, which we saw them do with the Colonial Pipeline, which we saw them do with JBS, our huge meat supplier. Among some of the options, disrupting internet connectivity across Russia, shutting off electric power, and tampering with railroad switches that would hamper Russia's ability to resupply its military forces, do you think that that would be the right move on the part of the US?

CHRIS PIERSON: I mean, you know, from a political perspective, there are many things you have to weigh. One of the biggest things that we in the United States have to weigh are throwing stones when we also too live in a glass house. So really going ahead and upping the ante and upping the different fervor that's happening right now is probably not something that's going to be conducive to talks with Russia, to talks with our allies. We have to be very, very careful here when or if the United States was ever to levy cyber weapons against general infrastructure.

In the United States alone, our critical infrastructure, 85% of it is within the hands of private sector companies. That's our gas, our roadways, transportation, telecom, all of that, private sector companies. So if we're going to throw cyber weapons across the pond, so to speak, that's something we have to be very careful about in terms of it coming back to us. Everything, every single company that exists today rides on cyber, rides on those ones and zeros and can be impacted.

There may be a point in time where, as part of a broader push in a coalition, that things are upped in terms of the attacks from different member states towards Russia. But I don't think we've reached that point in time yet. And it would be extraordinarily unwise to really escalate things out of control.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: I wonder how well-prepared though Vladimir Putin's usual suspects, if you will, the usual targets are. Because these cyber attacks are nothing new to them, especially in Ukraine. We also saw the UK build up a formidable cyber defense force, not just against Russia. And I'm wondering where you would put America in all of that. Are we best prepared? Have we learned our lesson from past cyber attacks from Russia?

CHRIS PIERSON: The fact of the matter is is that a dedicated adversary, especially at the nation state level, is going to get past cyber defenses for both government and private sector companies. If you have a sustained, dedicated, advanced persistent threat that is targeting you, there will be a way to get in there. And we've seen a number of different things over the years.

And so has Ukraine, back to 2015 and 2016, we saw disruption and energy attacks there. And even though there have been many years in between, still the infrastructure is risky. And from a cybersecurity perspective, there are ways in, there are avenues in. So, yes, many countries around the world, many cities have taken cyber security much more seriously.

But for a dedicated attack and a dedicated adversary, there are still going to be ways in. Nothing is 100% in terms of cybersecurity. So we really do need to weigh that. But there are a lot of things that companies here in the US can do,. private sector companies can do. And there are a lot of things that can happen in terms of government sector companies as well globally to make sure that they are really fortifying their defenses.

So it's not something that is without a solution. But it is something that we have to be very careful about. And Russia is one of those top operators globally. You know, Russia, China, Iran, the United States, all of these are tier one players and operators within the cyber sphere.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Yeah, to be continued for sure. Chris Pierson, CEO over there at BlackCloak. Thanks so much for your time, Chris.