Tushar Subhra Dutta reports:
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers have detained two hackers in Siberia who conducted cyberattacks on critical infrastructure facilities under direct orders from Ukrainian intelligence services.
The simultaneous arrests in the Kemerovo and Tomsk regions exposed a sophisticated cyber espionage network targeting Russia’s governmental, industrial, and financial information systems.
The primary suspect, a 36-year-old resident of Kemerovo, utilized encrypted messenger communications to coordinate with his Ukrainian handlers as part of an organized cyber unit.
Read more at Cyber Security News.
In other news, The Record reports that a man has been sentenced to 16 years in a high-security penal colony for launching cyberattacks that disrupted critical infrastructure. Andrei Smirnov had been detained in October 2023 and charged with treason. Prosecutors said he held pro-Ukrainian views and joined a hacker group allegedly acting in the interests of Ukrainian intelligence.