WASHINGTON - The Justice Department on Monday unsealed charges accusing six Russian military intelligence officers of an aggressive worldwide hacking campaign that caused mass disruption and cost billions of dollars by attacking targets like a French presidential election, the electricity grid in Ukraine and the opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.
He added,"Their cyber attack combined the emotional maturity of a petulant child with the resources of a nation-state." Cyber security and national security experts had long argued that the Russians were behind the hacks that prosecutors detailed Monday. But the indictment was the first time a major law enforcement agency made the allegation, bolstering the hacking unit's notoriety as one of the most audacious in the world.
The charges also showed the limits of the United States' power to deter Russia. Many of the breaches occurred after the US imposed sanctions and publicly rebuked Russia over its 2016 election sabotage, and it is highly unlikely that the Kremlin will hand over the intelligence officers to stand trial in American courts.
US officials have warned that Russia could repeat those tactics in the presidential race this year, mixing falsified material with real stolen documents in a way that is difficult to tell fact from fiction. "It was a vindictive attack. There was no clear geopolitical reason to do that. And it impacted the entire international community." Experts had initially blamed North Korea for the attack but later determined that the GRU used North Korean hacking tools to throw off investigators.
The Justice Department indictment said the suspects were also responsible for developing malware used in attacks on Ukraine's power grid. The first, on Dec 23, 2015, infiltrated Ukrainian energy companies, cutting power for hours to more than 200,000 residents in the country's west.
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