As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, from the air and on the ground, lawmakers in the U.S. are monitoring cyberspace.

Massachusetts congressional representative Jake Auchincloss has suggested, in a press release issued Wednesday, that President Joe Biden should consider cyber attacks as a means of defense and to “Deepen Putin’s pain and expand support for the Ukrainian resistance.”

Within a list of 10 recommendations made by Rep. Auchincloss (D-MA), he wrote Biden should consider “deniable, surgical cyber-attacks on Russian command & control and logistics nodes within Ukraine.”

Cybersecurity expert Chuck Brooks says that, behind the scenes, there are people across the world who’ve already taken up the effort on their own. 

“Groups like Anonymous and many talented hackers, from a variety of countries around the world, have joined forces with Ukrainians and have carried out thousands of attacks on Russian targets,” said Brooks. 

In the U.S., officials have also been concerned about the possibility that Russia could launch cyber attacks on countries who have offered Ukraine help amid the conflict. 

“I know that everyone’s on high alert in this situation...it’s certainly one of the tools in Putin’s toolkit,” said Sen. Angus King (I-Maine). 

So far, no significant cyber attacks from Russia have materialized in the U.S., but Brooks said the threat is still very real. He explained Russia could launch a cyberattack against assets like a country’s satellite systems, which can disrupt military operations, planning and intelligence gathering. 

“Cybersecurity is integral to any country’s defenses right now, because all of our multi domain warfare requires communication, a situational awareness, and cybersecurity is an imperative for all those,” Brooks said. 

Senator King, who is a member of both the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees, told Spectrum News 1 that the consensus among lawmakers in Washington is that Russian President Vladimir Putin has strategically held back on any of U.S. cyber attacks. 

“I suspect that unless he gets really desperate, that he’ll understand that it would be it would be an escalation,” King said. 

It would be an escalation that King said could be perceived as an act of war. Right now, the Senator said there’s no “clearly defined doctrine” on what constitutes an act of war in cyberspace but added that it’s something he’s tried to call attention to. 

“If [Russia] took down the grid and people froze to death, or hospital, people died in hospitals, I think that would be that would be considered a major attack,” King said of the implications a Russian cyber attack on U.S. infrastructure would have.  

Included in the latest budget bill passed by the House and under consideration by the Senate, as of Thursday night, is funding that would help Ukraine shore up its cyber defenses. It also includes money that would fund more government support for the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.