DHS warns of potential Russia cyberattacks amid tensions

“Russia maintains a range of offensive cyber tools that it could employ against US networks—from low-level denials-of-service to destructive attacks targeting critical infrastructure,” says the January 23 memo, which DHS distributed to critical infrastructure operators and state and local governments.

Despite US tensions with Russia over Ukraine, DHS analysts assess that Moscow’s threshold for conducting disruptive or destructive cyberattacks on the US homeland “probably remains very high,” the memo says. “[W]e have not observed Moscow directly employ these types of cyber attacks against US critical infrastructure—notwithstanding cyber espionage and potential prepositioning operations in the past.”

CNN has requested comment from DHS, which regularly distributes intelligence to private firms and state and local governments.

This story is breaking and will be updated.