Russia blamed for hack attacks
The West unleashed an onslaught of new evidence and indictments yesterday accusing Russian military spies of hacking so widespread that it seemed to target anyone, anywhere who investigates Moscow’s involvement in an array of crimes — including doping, poisoning and the downing of a plane.
Russia defiantly denied the charges. Moscow lashed back with allegations that the Pentagon runs a clandestine US biological weapons program.
The nucleus of yesterday’s drama was Russia’s military intelligence agency – the GRU, increasingly the embodiment of Russian meddling abroad.
In the last 24 hours: US authorities charged seven officers from the GRU with hacking international agencies; British and Australian authorities accused the GRU of a devastating 2017 cyberattack on Ukraine, the email leaks that rocked the US 2016 election and other damaging hacks; And Dutch officials alleged that GRU agents tried and failed to hack into the world’s chemical weapons watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
The ham-handed attempted break-in — involving hacking equipment in the trunk of a car and a trail of physical and virtual clues — was the most stunning operation revealed yesterday.
‘‘Basically, the Russians got caught with their equipment, people who were doing it, and they have got to pay the piper. They are going to have to be held to account,’’ US Defense Secretary James Mattis said..
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov of Russia said in a statement that the US is taking a ‘‘dangerous path’’ by ‘‘deliberately inciting tensions in relations between the nuclear powers,’’ adding that Washington’s European allies should also think about it.
Russia is already under EU and US sanctions, and dozens of GRU agents and alleged Russian trolls have already been indicted by the US but will likely never be face American justice.
The litany of accusations of GRU malfeasance began overnight, when British and Australian authorities accused the Russian agency of being behind the catastrophic 2017 cyberattack in Ukraine. The malicious software outbreak knocked out ATMs, gas stations, pharmacies and hospitals and, according to a secret White House assessment recently cited by Wired, caused US$10 billion in damage worldwide.
The British and Australians also linked the GRU to other hacks, including the Democratic Party email leaks and online cyber propaganda that sowed havoc before Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election.
Later yesterday, Dutch defense officials released photos and a timeline of GRU agents’ botched attempt to break into the chemical weapons watchdog using Wi-Fi hacking equipment hidden in a car parked outside a
nearby hotel. The OPCW was investigating a nerve agent attack on a former GRU spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter
in Salisbury, England, that Britain has blamed on the Russian government. Moscow vehemently denies involvement.
Photographs released by the Dutch Ministry of Defense showed a trunk loaded with a computer, battery, a bulky white
transformer and a hidden antenna.
What Dutch authorities found seemed to be the work of an amateur.