New cybercrime charges against Russia

The U.S Justice Department on Thursday charged seven Russian military intelligence officers with hacking anti-doping agencies and other organizations, saying the hackers targeted people who publicly supported a ban on Russian athletes in international competitions and condemned the country’s state-sponsored doping program. Other Western nations denounced the intelligence agency, called the GRU, this week, as well. Dutch and British officials labeled the agency “brazen” for allegedly attempting to hack the international Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the investigation of the 2014 crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over Ukraine. Britain’s National Cyber Security Center concluded that GRU personnel were behind numerous other cyberattacks. And Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Foreign Minister Marise Payne issued a joint statement saying Australian intelligence agencies agreed the GRU “is responsible for this pattern of malicious cyberactivity.”

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, said the accusations were fake and intended to “delegitimize Russia,” treating the GRU like the KGB, “which served as a bugaboo for people in the West during the Cold War.”