Russian Government Under Multiple Cyber Attack
A "cyber-spying virus" was found in the networks of about 20 organisations, the Federal Security Service (FSB) said. The report comes as Russia stands accused over data breaches involving the Democratic Party in the US.
It said the hack had been "planned and made professional", and targeted state organisations, scientific and defence companies, as well as "country's critically important infrastructures".
The malware allowed those responsible to switch on cameras and microphones within the computer, take screenshots and track what was being typed by monitoring keyboard strokes, the FSB said.
It has been claimed that these attacks are because the Russian security services have organised a number of denial of service attacks as a part of their Cyber-warfare against other countries, most notably 2007 cyberattacks on Estonia and 2008 cyberattacks on South Ossetia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.
One of young Russian hackers, who is now in the US, said that he was paid by the Russian state security services to lead the hacker attacks on NATO computers. He was majoring computer sciences at the Department of the Defense of Information. His tuition was paid by the FSB.
The belief is that the US and Israel have now set up monitoring and malware attacks against Russia to bring systems under their surveillance and to take down other systems. This is aimed at causing problems and shut downs that require response from the Russian IT specialists, taking them away from their current attack focus on the US and Western governments.
