{"id":34079,"date":"2021-04-15T15:47:28","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T22:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=34079"},"modified":"2021-04-16T15:48:31","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T22:48:31","slug":"biden-administration-sanctions-russia-for-solarwinds-hack-election-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=34079","title":{"rendered":"Biden administration sanctions Russia for SolarWinds hack, election interference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Biden administration on Thursday announced sanctions against Russia for its involvement in a recent major cyber espionage operation against the U.S., foreign influence operations around U.S. elections and other concerns.<\/p>\n<p>The Biden administration&#8217;s actions on Thursday:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Block U.S. financial institutions from purchasing bonds from Russia&#8217;s Central Bank, National Wealth Fund or Ministry of Finance after June 14 and from lending funds to these institutions.<\/li>\n<li>Expels\u00a010 personnel from the Russian diplomatic mission in Washington, some of whom U.S. officials say are representatives of Russian intelligence services.<\/li>\n<li>Sanctions\u00a0six Russian technology companies that\u00a0officials say provide support for Russian intelligence operations.<\/li>\n<li>Sanctions\u00a032 individuals involved in Russian efforts to influence the 2020 election.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The directive left open the possibility for the administration to expand the sanctions on Russian sovereign debt.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Blame game:<\/strong>\u00a0U.S. intelligence agencies in January said the recent SolarWinds hack was \u201clikely\u201d carried out by Russian hackers but did not fully attribute it.\u00a0 As part of Thursday\u2019s actions, the Biden administration issued a formal attribution naming Russia\u2019s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) as the culprit behind what has become one of the largest cyber espionage attacks in U.S. history.<\/p>\n<p>As part of the response to the malicious Russian hacking, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/nwkjgcwhkqqnbcbqntdkknjjkwnmqwqzzpkhcrmqqdpqyj_bgfpggflfypqpbglfpbq.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" data-saferedirecturl=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?q=https:\/\/click1.email.thehill.com\/nwkjgcwhkqqnbcbqntdkknjjkwnmqwqzzpkhcrmqqdpqyj_bgfpggflfypqpbglfpbq.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1618698267206000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGkp9bDGuNvhagIyp7uGabKPSpk5A\">issued an alert<\/a>\u00a0Thursday providing details on vulnerabilities used by the Russian hackers, along with ways to further defend networks.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What this means:<\/strong>\u00a0The sanctions are not likely to improve the chilly relationship between the U.S. and Russia, though Biden administration officials emphasized Thursday that they were not looking to heighten tensions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur objective here is not to escalate. Our objective here is to impose costs for what we feel are unacceptable actions by the Russian government,\u201d White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a briefing with reporters on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p><strong>More intelligence:<\/strong>\u00a0In addition to attributing the SolarWinds hack to Russia, administration officials said Thursday that the U.S. intelligence community assessed with \u201clow to medium confidence\u201d that Russia was behind bounties placed on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Biden administration on Thursday announced&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-u-s-a","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34080,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34079\/revisions\/34080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}