POWER GRAB

DOJ Indicts 4 Russian Government Employees for Vast Hacking Schemes

One of the indicted men was charged with hacking into a petrochemical facility in Saudi Arabia, forcing it to shut down twice.

The Department of Justice on Thursday announced indictments against a handful of Russians for allegedly organizing several hacking campaigns that targeted the energy sectors of roughly 135 countries between 2012 and 2018. The state-sponsored hackers, including three intelligence officials and one research institute employee at the Russian Ministry of Defense, threatened “critical infrastructure both in the United States and around the world,” according to U.S. Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco. In one indictment, filed last year and unsealed Thursday, the three officers with Russia’s federal security service were accused of targeting hundreds of energy firms “to establish and maintain surreptitious, unauthorized access” to their networks and computers, giving them the power to “disrupt and damage” the firms’ systems. The other indictment lists only the defense employee, Evgeny Viktorovich Gladkikh, and charges him with conspiring to hack into a Saudi Arabian petrochemical facility, targeting its safety systems and triggering two emergency shutdowns of the plant.