US arraigns six Russian nationals over cyber attacks

The United States has charged five Russian intelligence officials and a Russian civilian for conspiring to launch devastating cyber attacks against Ukraine and its allies.

This move comes just one day after the US took several legal actions against Russia to combat alleged efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential elections, including charging two employees of the Russian state media network RT and sanctioning RT and its top network editor.

The US Justice Department’s revised indictment, unsealed on Thursday, reveals that a cyber unit of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff (GRU), conducted “large-scale cyber operations” starting as far back as 2020, before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

These operations targeted computer systems in Ukraine and other countries, including a computer network maintained by an unnamed US agency in Maryland.

However, the revised indictment expands the scope of the conspiracy, naming additional defendants and detailing their alleged roles in the cyber operations.

The original indictment, filed in June in the US District Court for the District of Maryland, only named a single defendant: Amin Stigal.

It accused him of conspiring with the GRU to launch cyberattacks against Ukraine and other countries.

Earlier on Thursday, intelligence agencies in the US and the United Kingdom warned that a cyber espionage group located within the GRU, known as “Unit 29155”, was destructively targeting critical national infrastructure.

According to western officials, Unit 29155 is a covert part of the GRU that carries out subversion, sabotage, and assassination missions outside Russia.