U.S. military hackers are ready to respond fiercely to any cyberattack by Russia — having secretly penetrated Moscow's electric grid, telecommunications networks and command systems — according to senior intelligence and other classified documents.
The documents, reviewed by NBC News, confirmed longstanding assumptions that the United States was preparing to respond to any attacks on the nation's infrastructure.
The steps come amid continued fears that Russia will work to disrupt Tuesday's presidential election, possibly by releasing fake documents or creating false accounts on social media that would seek to spread misinformation, NBC reports.
Russia is not expected to attack the nation's critical infrastructure, which many officials believe would be an act of war.
However, the "Guccifer 2.0" hacker threatened Friday on Twitter to monitor the elections "from inside the system."
U.S. officials say Guccifer is a front for Russian intelligence.
Should Russia move against U.S. core infrastructure, American military hackers could shut down some of Moscow's systems — an "active defense," a senior intelligence official told NBC.
"I think there's three things we should do if we see a significant cyber-attack," James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as NATO commander of Europe, told the network. "The first obviously is defending against it.
"The second is reveal: We should be publicizing what has happened so that any of this kind of cyber trickery can be unmasked," he added. "Thirdly, we should respond.
"Our response should be proportional."
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