DOJ Indicts Russian Hackers for Targeting Energy Infrastructure Outside U.S.
The Indictments allege that between 2012 and 2018, four Russian defense employees conspired to damage critical infrastructure outside the United States, causing emergency shutdowns at one foreign facility. The decision to reveal the indictments underscored worries about a new wave of Russian cyberattacks since the Ukraine War.
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The U.S. Justice Department has announced indictments against four Russian government employees, charging that between 2012 and 2018 they conspired to damage critical infrastructure outside the United States, causing emergency shutdowns at one foreign facility, reports the Washington Post. A separate indictment filed in Kansas alleges that a hacking campaign launched by Russia’s federal security service, or FSB, targeted computers at hundreds of energy-related entities around the world.
U.S. officials sometimes make such indictments public in the hopes of deterring future, similar attacks. Russia does not extradite its citizens to the United States, so there is little chance that the four individuals charged will ever be brought to trial. The indictment alleges that one hacker carried out the hacking as part of his job at the Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics in Moscow, launching an extremely dangerous form of malware called Triton, sometimes referred to as “Trisis” or “Hatman.” The Kansas indictment names three members of the FSB’s Military Unit 71330, sometimes referred to as “Center 16,” where they allegedly carried out the attacks and charges the FSB hackers placed malware on more than 17,000 different devices “to establish and maintain surreptitious, unauthorized access .
