How cyber hacks might change under Trump's presidency

The world can expect a different geopolitical posture from the incoming Donald Trump presidency. Accordingly, a cybersecurity researcher says this might result in changed behavior by threat actors.

Lou Steinberg, founder and managing partner of CTM Insights, a cybersecurity research lab and incubator, suspects that a Trump victory on November 12th will impact threat actors from around the world.

Take Russia, for example. Trump might not necessarily be friendly to Vladimir Putin but during his first term, he met the Russian president a few times and has spoken about the limits of American financial and military support to Ukraine, a country attacked by Russia in 2022.

“It’s possible that the threat from Russia will be diminished,” said Steinberg before adding that the Kremlin may, however, “increase DDoS attacks against states in the Balkans, Georgia, and Moldova while increasing the use of AI-generated disinformation campaigns throughout Western Europe.”

Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the US Department of Justice has been quite aggressively going after Russian threat actors, regularly naming, shaming, and charging them.

This might now change – even though the World Cybercrime Index released earlier this year identified Russia as the most significant source of global cybercrime and the top hub for digital threat actors worldwide.

The White House again slammed Russia over ransomware’s healthcare hits last week, accusing Moscow of harboring cybercriminals and “allowing ransomware actors to operate from their territory with impunity, even after they have been asked to rein it in.”

The Trump administration will most likely be much tougher on China and Iran, Steinberg said.

The possibility of a large regional war in the Middle East is growing, and, as Washington is Israel’s most important ally, Iran’s cyber agents, in control of multiple proxies across the region, could increase hacking activities against the US, according to Steinberg.

“Iran may seek to increase the cost of supporting Israel through unattributed attacks against critical Western infrastructure such as power generation, municipal water systems, and dams,” he said.

Finally, if the new administration decides to impose fresh sanctions on China to cripple its rise, Beijing’s stealthy behavior, mostly focused on data theft, intelligence gathering, and general preparations for a cyber war scenario, could be replaced by “something much more noisy.”

“Backdoors could be used to disable critical infrastructure in banking, power generation and distribution, communications, etc. In the event of armed conflict between China and Taiwan, significant attacks against Western infrastructure could be used to blunt our ability to intervene,” Steinberg believes.

Of course, none of these outcomes are guaranteed. Lisa Plaggemier, executive director of the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a nonprofit organization, recently pointed out to Bank Info Security that cybersecurity seems to be a bipartisan issue, important to both Republicans and Democrats.

Still, according to Steinberg, “what's certain is that adversaries have interests and their tactics will reflect them.”

“Defenders need to consider how to adjust to a changing landscape as the threats change or risk investing in immaterial controls at the expense of what's now needed. Buckle up, it's likely to be a bumpy ride,” he said.