The US Justice Department said on Tuesday it had thwarted a longstanding Russian cyber-espionage campaign in which sensitive information was stolen from computer networks in dozens of countries, including the US and other NATO member countries.
Prosecutors linked the spy operation to a branch of Russia’s Federal Security Service and accused the hackers of stealing documents from hundreds of computer systems belonging to NATO governments. and other selected targets of interest to the Kremlin.
“For 20 years, the FSB has relied on Snake to conduct cyber espionage against the United States and our allies – and that ends today,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, head of the Justice Department’s homeland security division, said in a statement.
Specific targets were not mentioned in court documents, but US officials described the spy campaign as “related” after it managed to steal confidential documents from NATO countries and also target US government agencies and other institutions in the United States.
The Russian operation used malware known as Snake to infect computers. It was worked on by hackers belonging, according to the US Department of Justice, to a well-known facility of the Security Service of the Russian Federation in Ryazan, Russia.
