7 Russian intelligence officers charged by US for hacking anti-doping agencies, athletes

Washington, Oct 6 :The US Justice Department has charged seven Russian intelligence officers of going on a hacking rampage, targeting more than 250 athletes, a nuclear energy company and a Swiss chemical laboratory, apart from being involved in a wire fraud, identity theft and money laundering.
Three of the defendants were also charged in the hacking of US persons involved in the 2016 election, Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division John Demers said during a news conference on Thursday.
According to the indictment, the defendants — all members of the GRU, a Russian Federation intelligence agency within the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian military — engaged in a series of cyber attacks against anti-doping agencies and officials, sporting federations and more than 250 athletes in retaliation for the exposure of Russia’s state-backed doping programme.
“All of this was done to undermine those organisations’ efforts to ensure the integrity of the Olympic and other games. I hope that through today’s charges, which fall far from the electoral arena of our prior charges, we can further educate ourselves as to the scope of the Russian government’s disinformation and influence campaigns,” Mr Demers told CNN.
Through the use of spearphishing emails, stolen credentials and other cyberintrusions, a group calling itself the “Fancy Bears’ Hack Team” publicised medical information and drug testing results of athletes and peddled a false narrative that certain athletes were using performance-enhancing drugs, the prosecutors alleged.
When certain remote efforts failed to work, the prosecutors detailed how the GRU hackers travelled in some instances using Russian Government-issued diplomatic passports, in an attempt to gain access to Wi-Fi networks onsite.
Four of the names in the indictment match those given by Dutch authorities in connection with an alleged GRU cyber operation against the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international chemical weapons watchdog organization based in the Netherlands.
Thursday’s announcement comes after Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers in July for allegedly conducting a “sustained effort” to hack Democrats’ emails and computer networks.
That hacking singled out prominent Democrats in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with the intention to “release that information on the internet under the names DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 and through another entity,” according to the Justice Department.UNI