Russian Hackers Charged With Targeting Anti-Doping Agencies

The victims included about 250 athletes from 30 countries, along with anti-doping agencies around the world.

The US said its anti-doping agency and the US nuclear energy company Westinghouse were targeted by Russian intelligence.

In cases where remote attacks weren’t successful, GRU officers were sent overseas to conduct hacking operations against hotel Wi-Fi networks used by anti-doping officials during the Olympic Games.

The four Russians in the Netherlands were detained in April and expelled to Russia and not immediately prosecuted because the operation was considered military, not police, Eichelsheim said.

Earlier Thursday, the Dutch government announced it had disrupted a GRU cyberattack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

They said the Russian military intelligence service could have only been conducting operations of such scale on Kremlin orders.

When Theresa May addressed MPs on 5 September – revealing the identities of two Russian agents suspected of the Salisbury poisoning – she said the United Kingdom and its allies would step up their collective efforts against the country’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU.

The claims over cyber-attacks came after Theresa May said GRU officers used Novichok nerve agent to try to kill former double agent Sergei Skripal.

Russia’s GRU spy agency has suffered a new humiliation as a list of over 300 names of suspected agents has been discovered online.

2017 Ukraine infrastructure: The GRU is accused of a catastrophic attack in June 2017 on Ukraine using malicious software that briefly knocked out cash machines, petrol stations, pharmacies and hospitals.

The hack and release of sports figures’ medical data in 2016 and the downing of MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014 also allegedly carry the GRU’s fingerprints.

Agents are said to have travelled to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Lausanne in Switzerland, the USA state of Pennsylvania, and The Hague to target the OPCW.

GRU stands for the Main Intelligence Directorate, Russia’s military intelligence agency which is one of Moscow’s three spy agencies along with the FSB security service and the SVR foreign intelligence agency.

The allegations are part of an organised push-back against alleged Russian cyber attacks around the world.

Russian military intelligence “is active here in the Netherlands. where a lot of global organisations are (based)”, Eichelsheim said.

Russian Federation carried out retaliatory attacks against other actors as well.

It is believed that the two men accused of poisoning Russian ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, named as Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, are GRU agents.

He said the Russians in the Netherlands had multiple telephones, took hotel room rubbish – including empty cans of Heineken and Aldi orange juice – with them and had $20,000 and €20,000 in cash.

When certain remote efforts failed to work, prosecutors detailed how the GRU hackers traveled in some instances using Russian Government-issued diplomatic passports in an attempt to gain access to Wi-Fi networks onsite.

USA defence secretary Jim Mattis said he agreed with the British and Dutch assessments.

Mr Hunt said: “These cyber attacks serve no legitimate national security interest, instead impacting the ability of people around the world to go about their daily lives free from interference, and even their ability to enjoy sport”.

Well, we now know what she means.

“This is not the actions of a great power”.

They used illegal crypto currency such as Bitcoin to “further their conspiracies”, Demers said.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison added: ‘Cyberspace is not the Wild West.