Prosecutors have linked a spying operation to a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB).
The US Justice Department says it has disrupted a long-running Russian cyber-espionage campaign that stole sensitive information from computer networks in dozens of countries, including NATO members.
NATO Govts.
Prosecutors linked the spying operation to a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) & accused the hackers of stealing documents from 100s of computer systems belonging to NATO Govts., an unidentified journalist for a US news organisation who reported on Russia, & other targets of interest to the Kremlin.
“For 20 years, the FSB has relied on the ‘Snake’ malware to conduct cyber-espionage against the US & our allies — that ends today,” assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, explained in a statement.
Consequential
The specific targets were unnamed in court papers, but US officials described the espionage campaign as “consequential,” having extracted sensitive documents from NATO countries & Govt. agencies & other organisations in the US.
The Russian operation relied on the malicious software known as Snake to infect computers, with hackers operating from what the Justice Department revealed was a known FSB facility in Ryazan, Russia.
US officials revealed that they had been investigating ‘Snake’ for about 10 years & came to view it as the most sophisticated malware implant used by the Russian Govt. for espionage.
They stated that Turla, the FSB unit believed responsible for the malware, had refined & revised it multiple times to avoid being shut down.
‘Perseus’
The US Justice Department, using a warrant this week from a Federal judge in Brooklyn, launched what it commented was a high-tech operation using a specialised tool called ‘Perseus’ that caused the malware to effectively self-destruct.
US Federal officials said they were confident that, based on the impact of its operation this week, the FSB would be unable to reconstitute the malware implant.
