Amateurish efforts have still put West on back foot
COMMENT
BY CHRIS HUGHES SECURITY EXPERT IT APPEARS there is no limit to the resources Russia will throw at espionage and intelligence gathering.
But even for a country obsessed with testing the West, it seems it has stepped up operations.
Beyond the GRU, there are still Russia’s traditional domestic intelligence outfits – who make the GRU’s methods look amateurish.
The string of espionage operations conducted by the GRU have almost been very effective but are clumsy and often simplistic.
Worryingly, it appears Putin’s military intelligence arm seems not to care about being seen – so much so their spies do not even BY ANDREW GREGORY & CHRIS HUGHES BRAZEN Vladimir Putin tried to nobble the probe into the Salisbury attack, it was revealed yesterday.
The Russian president’s GRU spy unit launched a secret cyber war to thwart UK and global investigators.
But four of his operatives were caught red-handed in the Netherlands with a cyber hacking kit in their car boot.
A senior UK security official said: “Discrediting the investigation could well have been their intention.”
As tension between Putin and the West grew, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson said Russia had now become a “pariah state”.
It comes after explosive details of a string of Russia cyber attacks against Britain and the West were revealed.
Britain is now set to strike back with a new set of sanctions.
The regime, currently being prepared, would allow Britain to target individuals anywhere in the world, freeze their assets and ban them from the UK.
Sanctions could get the green light from the EU within a fortnight. A senior diplomatic source said: “We are making good progress.” Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed the UK and its allies were looking at slapping “further sanctions” on Russia.
The British ambassador to the Netherlands, Peter Wilson, said spies would also keep “confronting, exposing and disrupting” Russian cyber attacks.
British and Dutch officials yesterday revealed a four-man GRU spy team tried to hack the global watchdog probing the Salisbury poisonings.
A dossier revealed they drank cans of Heineken and parked at a Marriott hotel while targeting the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague.
Equipment in the boot of their rented car was pointed at the HQ and was being used to intercept login details. The antenna for the operation lay under a jacket on the car’s rear shelf. One of their mobiles was activated near the GRU building in Moscow, while another carried a receipt for a taxi journey from a street near the GRU to the airport.
The gang – Evgenii Serebriakov, 37, Aleksei Morenets, 41, Oleg Sotnikov, 46, and Alexey Minin, 46 – could not be arrested as they held diplomatic passports.
They were expelled and are now believed to be back in Russia.
Last night, they were charged in the US over OPCW plot but it is almost certain they will
Russians’ hire car with spy equipment in the boot and an antenna under a coat aimed at the OPCW HQ not be extradited.
They were also charged, with three other defendants, with being part of the Fancy Bears group that hacked antidoping authorities and leaked records causing controversy for cyclist Sir Bradley Wiggins and other sports stars.
Prime Minister Theresa May said the alleged plot against the OPCW showed “the GRU’s disregard for global values and rules that keep us all safe”.
The GRU also tried to hack remotely into Foreign Office computers in Whitehall in March as well as defence labs at Porton Down, Wiltshire, in April after Sergei Skripal and daughter Yulia were poisoned with novichok nerve agent.
A senior UK security official said: “Judging from their past form elsewhere, discrediting the investigation could well have been their intention.
“For the GRU to get caught in this way would be considered a pretty bad day.”
A second senior official stressed the GRU was acting on the orders of the Kremlin – meaning the cyber attacks were approved by Putin.
The source said: “Russia’s intelligence services are conducting operations against the UK all the time.”
Britain also accused the GRU of other cyber attacks, including efforts to target Olympic officials in Switzerland.
Russia dismissed the allegations as “Western spy mania”.