Earlier this afternoon, DHS, the FBI and UK National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) issued an unprecedented formal warning about "malicious cyber activity" by the Russian government. The joint technical alert sets out the threat to industry, warning that Russian state-sponsored actors are using "compromised routers" to conduct spoofing "man-in-the-middle" attacks to "support espionage, extract intellectual property, maintain persistent access to victim networks and potentially lay a foundation for future offensive operations".

AlertsUSA subscribers are reminded that modern warfare extends far beyond that carried out on land, at sea, in the air and space. Through technological advancement and diffusion, operational environments now include the cyber and electromagnetic domains. In military parlance, this is collectively referred to as a multi-domain battlespace.

In plain English, what this means is that in addition to soldiers and artillery on the ground, fighter jets and bombers in the air, and ships and submarines at sea, determined adversaries can also target computer and telecommunications networks, power grids and many other areas of critical infrastructure.

These actions can come in the form of targeted hacking as well as through the spread of malware and viruses, including through your home and office computers.

While the broader protective actions taken to defend the nation are handled by government and industry, there are concrete steps you can take to help.