The U.S. has charged six Russian Russian Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) officers of carrying out sweeping state-sponsored cyber attacks that included taking Ukraine’s power grid offline, and election interference in France.
GRU is a military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces. In 2018, the U.S. indicted seven officers tied to Unit 74455 of GRU in relation to Moscow’s efforts to interfere in America’s 2016 presidential election. The latest round of charges does not pertain to those activities.
In a statement today, the U.S. Department of Justice said the GRU hackers and their co-conspirators engaged in computer intrusions and attacks intended to support Russian government efforts to undermine, retaliate against, or otherwise destabilize: (1) Ukraine; (2) Georgia; (3) 2017 elections in France; (4) efforts to hold Russia accountable for its use of a weapons-grade nerve agent, Novichok, on foreign soil; and (5) the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games after Russian athletes were banned from participating under their nation’s flag, as a consequence of Russian government-sponsored doping effort.