Biden hoping to crack down on Russian ransomware attacks

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman reports on Biden’s meeting with Putin in regards to ransomware attacks.

Video Transcript

- Vladimir Putin said, we know about cyber attacks on a pipeline in the US. But he said Russian authorities have nothing to do with that. Let's bring in Rick Newman now for more on this meeting between Biden and Putin and what they said regarding cybersecurity. I don't know about you, Rick, but I don't know what starting consultations on cybersecurity exactly means.

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, I mean, first of all, let's start out with something that is important here. Cybersecurity was one of the top issues for the Biden administration going into this summit, and that is new. The Biden administration has basically said, we now consider hacking attacks against American companies plus the kinds of intelligence operations that Russia has been doing for a long time as a national security threat and not just a law enforcement threat. That is telling the world and President Putin that we consider this a very serious breach and we're gonna put more resources into dealing with it.

Now, nobody expected that Biden would say, you know what, Vlad, you got to knock it off, you got to get these people to stop these hacks, and Vladimir Putin would say, OK, I'll see what I can do. I mean, that was never gonna happen. So we'll see how this plays out in the future. And we'll see what Biden has to say about it.

But I suppose you could say it's notable that Putin did say, effectively, we acknowledge this is a problem, although, as he did with many other issues, he accused the United States of being as nefarious a player at this as people in Russia. And many American cybersecurity experts say that's just not true, that more than half of all ransomware attacks in the world come from Russia. So we'll see what Biden has to say about it.

- We certainly shall. When are we expected to hear from Biden regarding today's summit?

RICK NEWMAN: Any minute.

- Or are we?

RICK NEWMAN: Yeah, no, he's gonna give his own press conference any minute. So Putin got to go first, and in a way I guess that lets Biden have the last word. But they're obviously speaking to different audiences. Putin is, you know, largely addressing his domestic audience in Russia, where Biden is doing the same thing for the domestic audience in the United States.

So it's always interesting to contrast the different ways American and Russian leaders characterize these meetings, and I'm sure it will be no different today.

- I'm sure it will not. All right, we know you'll be on the case for us, though. Rick Newman, thanks so much.