Estonia, the UK, the Netherlands and other European Union countries are pushing for the EU’s sanctions regime to include cyber attacks after the alleged attempts by Russian and Chinese operatives to break into the computer systems of European agencies.
The European Union has sanctions protocols targeting countries that violate nuclear or chemical weapons treaties and harbour terrorism. Now Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Romania, the UK and the Netherlands are asking the EU to include a similar system against the individuals and organisations that are behind cyber attacks, Bloomberg reports.
“We urgently need to implement a similar regime to address malicious cyber activity,” the countries wrote in the memo to the EU’s other member states, according to Bloomberg. “The pace of events has accelerated considerably,” making “the introduction of such a regime a pressing priority.”
The leaders of the EU are to discuss security next week in Brussels, Belgium.
Last week, the American, British and Dutch authorities accused Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency of attempting to breach institutions that were looking into allegations of Russian wrongdoing, Bloomberg says.
“A separate Bloomberg Businessweek story last week detailed how China’s intelligence services had ordered subcontractors to plant malicious chips in Super Micro Computer Inc.’s server motherboards,” the news agency adds.
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