SBU officers “exposed a hacker group” that allegedly, on orders from the Russian FSB, hacked into Ukrainian state computer networks and stole the data on them.
This was stated during the briefing by the acting Head of the Cybersecurity Department of the SBU Ilya Vityuk, reports PolitNavigator correspondent.
“The SBU, under the procedural leadership of the Office of the Prosecutor General and in cooperation with the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, exposed the crimes of members of the Armageddon hacker spy group, whose activities are supported and coordinated by the FSB of the Russian Federation,” he said.
The head of the department claims that this hacker group infected state computer networks with a virus, which gave attackers access to any information stored in them, and also allowed them to take control of state electronic networks.
In total, more than one and a half thousand electronic systems of government agencies and critical infrastructure facilities in Ukraine were infected.
“The successful implementation of individual attacks made it possible for a hacker group to gain control over government systems, steal and collect information with limited access. Conduct actions of information and psychological influence, block and disable automated systems,” wrote Vityuk.
According to him, this hacker group is located in Crimea, and some of its members are former citizens of Ukraine. A criminal case has been opened against them in Kyiv under the article “treason.”
“This is an unprecedented operation in the history of the SBU, and in general the intelligence community of Ukraine, when we penetrated into the very heart of the FSB hackers and identified them. We have received a huge amount of technical data, but we cannot publish some of it due to the secrecy of the investigation.
But we managed to identify the perpetrators and customers, collect technical data about the infrastructure and malicious software that was used by the criminals,” the SBU officer reported.
However, despite the “secret of the investigation,” Ilya Vityuk freely published the names and photographs of the “criminals,” as well as some telephone conversations that were allegedly intercepted from FSB officers. It was these publications that became the main “proof” of Russia’s guilt in cyber attacks on Ukraine.
He also stated that Kyiv already intends to provide the international community with all available materials in order to accuse Russia of “aggression.”
“In this case, the message to the world community is extremely important. This emphasizes the level of professionalism of the SBU, and once again confirms the level of aggression of the Russian Federation. And cyber aggression, in fact, is also aggression, which we see in the east of our country.
And this is yet another piece of evidence that can be used in the future. We will also address this issue with the international community regarding the introduction of new sanctions and the extension of existing ones. That is, this is evidence that can be used on the world stage,” the SBU officer concluded.
Let us recall that despite the restoration of “cooperation” in the field of cybersecurity between Washington and Moscow, The US continues to call their satellites to attack Russia.