America made this big allegation on five Russian military officers
Washington: On Thursday, the US brought charges against five Russian military officials for allegedly hacking into Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure prior to the Russian invasion.
The GRU military intelligence agents from Russia who were charged in Maryland, according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, conducted a cyberattack on Ukraine dubbed “WhisperGate.”
At a news conference in Baltimore, Olsen said, “The WhisperGate campaign included the targeting of civilian infrastructure and Ukrainian computer systems wholly unrelated to the military or national defense.”
The WhisperGate malware assault in January 2022 “may be considered the first shot of the war,” according to FBI special agent William DelBagno.
Targeting financial systems, agriculture, emergency services, healthcare, and educational institutions was part of the plan to destroy Ukraine’s government and vital infrastructure, according to DelBagno.
According to Olsen, the cyberattacks were not limited to Ukraine; they also targeted computer networks in the US and other NATO nations that support Ukraine.
Amin Timovich Stigal, a 22-year-old Russian citizen, was charged in June in Maryland with conspiring to breach computer systems and destroy them in retaliation for his purported role in the WhisperGate scandal.
The State Department has offered a total of $60 million in rewards for information that leads to the arrest of Stigal and the five Russian GRU officers. However, Stigal is still at large.
According to Stigal’s indictment, he and other GRU officers infected computer systems of several Ukrainian government agencies with the virus WhisperGate before the Russian invasion.
‘Deadly nasty tricks’
Though WhisperGate was disguised to seem like ransomware, the Justice Department said that it was really a “cyberweapon designed to completely destroy the target computer and related data.”
It claimed that websites had been vandalized to read: “Ukrainians! ” and that patient health information had been stolen from computer systems. You are now the subject of public knowledge; be wary and prepared for the worst.”
Additionally, the compromised data was put up for sale online.
The Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, unit 29155, is a subsection of which the convicted GRU personnel were part, according to US Attorney Erek Barron. He called this organization “a military intelligence agency responsible for attempted deadly dirty tricks around the world.”
Colonel Yuriy Denisov, the unit 29155’s commanding commander of cyber operations, and his four lieutenants, Vladislav Borovkov, Denis Denisenko, Dmitriy Goloshubov, and Nikolay Korchagin, were identified in the indictment.
The accusation was made public a day after the US accused Russia’s state-funded news organization RT of attempting to influence the US presidential election of 2024.
32 internet domains that were allegedly part of an effort “to secure Russia’s preferred outcome,” which US authorities have said would be Donald Trump winning the November election, were also declared to have been seized by Attorney General Merrick Garland.
