West accuses Russia of persistent cyberhacking campaign
West accuses Russia of persistent cyberhacking campaign
US and British and Dutch authorities accused Russia of a widespread campaign of piracy, and described on Thursday a persistent effort by the Kremlin to attack the agencies that exposed the alleged faults in Moscow, including the doping of its athletes and the poisoning of a former Russian officer in Britain.
The Dutch government said early on Thursday that its intelligence services had interrupted a Russian plan to hack the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague in April. Officials said Russian officials tried to compromise the Wi-Fi network of the global watchdog, which confirmed that the chemical weapons were used as part of the assassination attempt on the former Russian officer.
The US authorities then revealed an indictment against seven Russian intelligence officials, including those allegedly involved in the Hague effort, accusing them of this and other malicious cyber efforts.
Officers worked from 2014 to this year, according to the indictment, to hack the networks of international anti-doping organizations and the email accounts of officials. The generalized scheme of doping in Russia caused the country to be banned from using its flag or anthem during the 2018 Winter Olympics.
This combined image obtained from the Federal Bureau of Investigation on October 4 shows seven suspected agents of GRU, the Russian military agency, who were accused of piracy.
Photo:
FBI
Moscow strongly rejected the claims on Thursday.
The coordinated international campaign comes amid a serious deterioration of Moscow's relations with the West after the Poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March.. United States, Canada and more than a dozen European countries together. dozens of Russian diplomats expelled and the intelligence officials in response, and Washington imposed sanctions in August. Mr. Skripal was a former officer of the GRU, the Russian military agency that employs the accused officers.
"Russia cheated, they caught them, they banned them from going to the Olympics, they got angry, they took reprisals and, in retaliation, they broke the law," said Scott Brady, a US attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, where is another victim of the alleged Russian efforts, Westinghouse Electric Co.
"This is not spy against spy," said Brady, adding that Russian efforts were aimed at "innocent citizens."
The 41-page indictment names three defendants who were previously indicted by special attorney Robert Mueller for his alleged role in hacking Democratic servers and distributing stolen information before the 2016 presidential election. However, the new case it was not derived from Mr. Mueller's work, said a Justice Department official.
U.K. He also said on Thursday that he believed the GRU was behind a series of major hacks, including the disclosure of the results of the US doping tests. UU And other athletes. He also corroborated the conclusion of the EE agencies. UU That the GRU was responsible for the filtering in 2016 of the emails of the Democratic National Committee.
The British Foreign Ministry said the GRU was guilty of "indiscriminate and reckless" cyber attacks in the past three years that affected a variety of political and media institutions.
The Dutch Ministry of Defense published an image showing the equipment found in a vehicle in The Hague after the Netherlands expelled four suspected Russian agents in April.
Photo:
DUTCH DEFENSE MINISTRY
The alleged Russian operations, which also targeted some 250 athletes, including those who had condemned Russia's doping program, were reflected in many ways. Alleged operation of Moscow in the USA UU before the 2016 elections.
Both were designed, as alleged by the United States authorities, to promote misinformation and to influence public opinion in a way that furthered Russia's interests. The electoral interference intervention allegedly involved remote hackers, while doping operations also included in-person efforts by officers to attack Wi-Fi networks used by individuals in hotels and other locations, the indictment said.
In addition to the unusual coordinated international initiative, Canada on Thursday said it had concluded with "high confidence" that the GRU was responsible for Illegal collection of information from the World Anti-Doping Agency based in Montreal.
At a press conference, Commodore Onno Eichelsheim, head of the Netherlands Military Intelligence and Security Service, provided evidence that the attempt to hack the chemical warfare dog occurred at close range "at a time when They were investigating the Skripal case."He showed pictures of four alleged GRU agents who flew from Moscow to Amsterdam on April 10 with diplomatic passports.
Three days later, the alleged Russian agents were intercepted by the Dutch counterintelligence while trying to pirate the OPCW Wi-Fi network from a rental car parked in the parking lot of a nearby hotel. The four were escorted to the Amsterdam airport and took a flight back to Moscow instead of being arrested, because "this was a counterintelligence, not a police investigation," said Mr. Eichelsheim.
The OPCW said that on Thursday, British and Dutch officials learned of the piracy attempt and "take the security of their information systems very seriously."
In its rejection of the accusations, Moscow described in particular the British claims as delirious and a "diabolical mixture of perfume".
"They mixed everything in a bottle, which could be a Nina Ricci perfume bottle: GRU, cyber-spies, Kremlin hackers and [World Anti-Doping Agency]"Russian news agency Interfax told the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova that the British authorities believe that the The nerve agent Novichok was hidden in a perfume bottle Nina Ricci.
According to the US indictment, Russian intelligence agents made a "concerted effort to draw media attention to leaks through a proactive disclosure campaign" for journalists, after stealing information through their cyber campaigns.
The Twitter accounts used by the alleged hackers, @fancybears and @fancybearHT, sent direct messages to the Twitter accounts of around 116 reporters around the world to announce the stolen information and request coverage, the indictment said.
Justice Department officials urged journalists to be more judicious in reporting stolen information provided by hackers. The head of the Department of Justice's national security division, John Demers, said he hoped journalists would "cast a suspicious eye on future" hack and filter "operations that seek in part to manipulate the stories to promote the interests of the Russian state. "
Security researchers said the prosecution could have a big impact on Russian hackers.
"A key part of his operation has just stopped," said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at the US-based FireEye cybernetic firm.
Diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Russia have reached a low level after the attempted assassination of Mr. Skripal and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury this year.
Two men, identified as Russian operatives in GRU by the British, have been accused in the President of the United States of Russia. Vladimir Putin has dismissed the accusations of the participation of the Kremlin, saying that the accused were civilians. But Mr. Putin also this week called Mr. Skripal a "traitor".
Mr. Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel who was a double agent for the United Kingdom, is now under the protection of the British authorities in an undisclosed location, together with his daughter.
-Sadie Gurman
and Valentina Pop
Contributed to this article.
Write to Aruna Viswanatha in Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com and Max Colchester in max.colchester@wsj.com
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SOURCE LINK ERESVIRAL.COM https://www.beviral.online
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