With Russian cyberattacks on the rise, NATO nations ready to play offense

A cyberattack shut down some of Europe’s biggest airports last month – including London Heathrow, Berlin Brandenburg and Brussels – stranding thousands of passengers as hackers held online data for ransom. The target, Collins Aerospace, builds check-in systems for airlines, but it had also recently scored a contract to help NATO wage electronic warfare.

It was yet another in a series of high-profile cyber incursions in Europe. A few months earlier, hackers opened a Norwegian dam’s floodgates by exploiting a weak password – a mixture of real-life and cyber sabotage that authorities attributed to Russia.

Such cyber strikes are on the rise, warns a report this month by the European Union’s Agency for Cybersecurity, and they are often carried out by China and Russia to “erode the resiliency” of Western nations.

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