Gwen Baumgardner: A major pipeline. A meat packing plant. And a Florida City water plant. All taken out by devastating ransomware attacks that shut down their systems, caused nationwide shortages and cost them a lot of money. And all believed to have been done by cyber criminals inside Russia.

The sparring on the issue began well before the Biden-Putin summit,

So, who are these people? And just how big is this thing? Let’s Get This Straight.

They’ve got names like Darkside and Evil Corp and are behind more than 1-thousand attacks worldwide so far this year — most in the U-S.

A Michigan State University study finds the damage is hundreds of billions per year worldwide.

It also shows the hackers function a lot like organized crime, but instead of being multi-year and multi-generational, they are loosely formed groups coming together to do one thing and then disappear.

Not all of the money is pocketed. Experts say some of it goes to fund other criminal enterprises like sex trafficking, child porn and weapons.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would hand over cyber criminals to the U-S, but only if the US hands over criminals Russia is seeking.

President Joe Biden says we are not asking for extradition; we want Putin to hold cyber criminals accountable — because the U-S already is.

Got that straight?