bogdanwankowicz / DepositPhotos

bogdanwankowicz / DepositPhotos

The Council of the European Union adopted sanctions against four Russians for their involvement in the cyber attacks on European targets. We are talking about Alexey Minin, Alexey Morente Evgeny Serebryakov and Oleg Sotnikova, which the Netherlands in the spring of 2018 sent for training attacks on the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons (OPCW). In the European Union came to the conclusion that the Russians are employees of special services.

The sanctions include a travel ban and assets freeze. In addition, natural and legal persons of the EU it is forbidden to cooperate with those included in the list.

Under the sanctions were also the Main center of special technologies (as formulated in the EU Council regulation) of the Main intelligence Directorate of the General staff of the Russian Armed forces (GRU).

As reported by the Dutch authorities in April 2018 GRU officers arrived in the country with diplomatic passports, with similar rooms, and soon with the help of special equipment to remotely connect to Wi-Fi networks tried to seize the headquarters of the OPCW in the Hague data to enter the system of the organization.

If their attempt was successful, would have violated the security of the network and work on the investigation, which was conducted by the OPCW. “The intelligence service and military security of the Netherlands (Militaire Inlichtingen – en Veiligheidsdienst – MIVD) prevented the attempt of a cyber attack, thereby eliminating serious damage to the OPCW”, – stated in the Annex to the decision of the EU Council.

In the autumn of the same year, the intelligence agencies of Western countries have accused the Russians to participate in several “outbound attacks”, writes “Novaya Gazeta”. According to the evidence discovered on the laptop of one of the arrested hackers, they in 2014 was going to steal the data of the investigation of the crash of passenger plane MH17, as well as to crack in Lausanne one of the computers WADA. “Hackers GRU” was also accused of cyber attacks and break-ins NPP, FIFA, CAS, the IAAF, and about 30 sports organizations.

Besides the Russians, under sanctions for cyber attacks came two Chinese citizen, and Chinese company Tianjin Huaying Haitai Science and Technology Development Co. Ltd and North Korean Chosun Expo, reports “Interfax”. They are, according to the EU, involved in the spread of the virus-the extortioner WannaCry, as well as espionage operations Cloud Hopper against cloud providers of it services.