FBI sabotages Russian secret service spyware: ‘Used against NATO countries for 20 years’ | Abroad

With “Operation Medusa”, US authorities disabled software that allowed the Russian secret service FSB to steal “hundreds of sensitive documents from at least 50 countries” by attacking government IT departments and the media, the report said. US State Department in a Justice statement. .

“Through the high-tech operation that turned this Russian malware against itself, the FBI has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyber-espionage tools,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said.

According to US authorities, an FSB unit was the source of the software. Known as “Turla”, the infamous hacking group was based in Ryazan, a Euro-Russian town about 200 km southeast of Moscow. The group has been active for two decades against various NATO-affiliated targets, US government agencies and technology companies, a senior FBI official said.

It is very likely that the private data of all Dutch people fell into the hands of hackers (video):

The software could identify and steal documents and go unnoticed indefinitely. The Russians were then able to exfiltrate the data (the unauthorized release of data from a computer system, editor’s note) through the global network of infected computers.

After years, the American authorities succeeded in creating a tool, Perseus, which could communicate with Snake and ask the software to stop without involving the central computer.

Russian diplomats did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters and AP news agencies. Moscow systematically denies having carried out cyber espionage operations.

In 2018, German authorities announced that they had been the target of an unprecedented “Snake” software attack. The software also reportedly hit in Belgium, Ukraine, the United States and Georgia.

Hackers also manage to mess things up in Russia, as they did in Moscow last year (video):