Seven Russian intelligence officers were indicted for hacking the computers of anti-doping sports agencies and other organizations around the world, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
The 41-page indictment said that Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as GRU, targeted the anti-doping agencies because they backed a ban on Russian athletes in international sports competitions and publicly condemned the country’s state-run athlete doping program.
“This indictment alleges a conspiracy to use computer hacking to obtain non-public, personal health information about athletes and others in the files of anti-doping agencies and sporting federations in multiple countries, and to release that stolen information selectively, and sometimes misleadingly,” said John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security. “All of this was done to undermine those organizations’ efforts to ensure the integrity of the Olympic and other games.”
The group also went after the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pennsylvania, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons that was investigating the use of chemical weapons in Syria and a Swiss lab that was testing the poison used in the attack of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
The hackers often worked remotely or worked with other trained GRU operatives using sophisticated equipment to reach their targets by accessing Wi-Fi networks.
“The defendants believed they could use their anonymity to act with impunity in their own countries and on the territories of other sovereign nations to undermine international institutions and to distract from their government’s own wrongdoing,” Demers said. “They were wrong.”
The seven were charged with computer hacking, wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering.
The charges don’t seem to be related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, although three of the seven had been indicted by his prosecutors.
With Post wires
Credit: NY Post</>
via USAHint.com
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