US charges six Russian military officers linked to some of world’s largest cyber attacks

Six accused of roles in secret state-sponsored hacking group Sandworm

People need to be "cyber fit" if they are going to stay protected against online fraud this winter. EPA

US authorities on Monday charged six Russian military officers in connection with some of the world’s largest cyber attacks in the past decade.

The US Department of Justice revealed the charges against the six officers from Russia’s main intelligence directorate GRU, and said they were members of a sophisticated state-sponsored Russian secret hacking group called Sandworm.

These charges are the first against Sandworm.

They include computer fraud and conspiracy in launching attacks that entailed taking down Ukraine's power grid in 2015, an attempt to disrupt the French elections in 2016 and an attack on the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018.

The charges include computer fraud and conspiracy and an attack on the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. Reuters

The officers are aged in their twenties and thirties and were identified as Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko, Sergey Vladimirovich Detistov, Pavel Valeryevich Frolov, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, Artem Valeryevich Ochichenko, and Petr Nikolayevich Pliskin

US officials described Russian cybercrime as malicious and irresponsible.

“No country has weaponised its cyber capabilities as maliciously or irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite,” assistant attorney general John Demers said.

The FBI was also involved in the case.

“The FBI has repeatedly warned that Russia is a highly capable cyber adversary, and the information revealed in this indictment illustrates how pervasive and destructive Russia’s cyber activities truly are,” FBI deputy director David Bowdich said.

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “The GRU’s actions against the Olympic and Paralympic Games are cynical and reckless. We condemn them in the strongest possible terms.

“The UK will continue to work with our allies to call out and counter future malicious cyber attacks.”

Other cyber attacks the group carried out over the past five years were against worldwide businesses and critical infrastructure (using the NotPetya malware), Novichok poisoning investigations, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and Georgian companies and government entities.

The NotPetya attack was on major companies such as Fedex and Maersk.

In some cases it was aimed at medical centres, shutting down computers at two hospitals in Pennsylvania, and blocking patients’ access to medical systems, the Justice Department said.

Yuriy Sergeyevich Andrienko was charged for helping to develop NotPetya.