By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. on Thursday charged 5 Russian intelligence officers and a Russian civilian with conspiring to launch cyberattacks in opposition to Ukraine and its allies in a bid to hobble Ukraine.
In a revised indictment unsealed on Thursday, the Justice Division stated a cyber unit of Russia’s army intelligence company carried out “large-scale cyber operations” beginning way back to 2020, earlier than Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The unique indictment, filed in June within the U.S. District Courtroom for the District of Maryland, solely named a single defendant: Amin Stigal.
It accused him of conspiring with Russia’s army intelligence company, referred to as the Foremost Intelligence Directorate of the Normal Employees, or GRU, to launch cyber assaults in opposition to pc programs in Ukraine and different international locations, together with a pc community maintained by an unnamed U.S. company in Maryland.
Thursday’s information comes simply someday after the U.S. took a number of authorized actions in opposition to Russia to fight alleged efforts to meddle within the 2024 presidential elections, together with charging two staff of the Russian state media community RT and sanctioning RT and its high community editor.
It additionally got here on the identical day that the Justice Division introduced it had secured two indictments in opposition to Russian TV contributor Dimitri Simes and his spouse over sanctions violations and cash laundering.
Earlier on Thursday, intelligence businesses within the U.S. and the UK warned {that a} cyber espionage group situated inside Russia’s GRU referred to as “Unit 29155” was destructively focusing on essential nationwide infrastructure.
Unit 29155, which is the group on the coronary heart of Thursday’s indictment, is a covert a part of the GRU which carries out subversion, sabotage and assassination missions outdoors Russia, Western officers informed Reuters.
