US indicted Russian for alleged cyberattacks on Ukraine before the war
Kyiv • UNN
Russian citizen Artem Amin Stigal was charged by the United States with conspiring with Russian military intelligence agency GRU to conduct cyberattacks on Ukrainian government computer systems and destroy data before Russia's invasion in 2022.
A federal jury in the US state of Maryland has returned an indictment accusing a 22-year-old Russian citizen of conspiring to hack into Ukrainian government computer systems and destroy them and their data. This is stated in the press release of the US Department of Justice, reports UNN.
Details
Amin Stigal allegedly colluded with Russia's GRU military intelligence and then carried out cyberattacks against the Ukrainian government just before Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022,
According to court documents, in January 2022, Stigal and members of the GRU conspired to use the services of a US company to spread malware to dozens of computer systems of Ukrainian government agencies and destroy them and related data stored on them in advance of the Russian invasion.
On January 13, 2022, Stigal and conspirators from the GRU attacked several Ukrainian government agencies, according to a press release from the Ministry of Justice. Among them were the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, the State Treasury, the Judicial Administration, the Ministry of Education and Science, and the Ministry of Agriculture.
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The conspirators infected computers on agency networks with malware called WhisperGate, which looked like ransomware but was actually designed to completely destroy the target computer and its associated data.
The indictment states that the cybercriminals hacked into several Ukrainian computer systems, stole confidential data, and left the following message on the websites: "Ukrainians! All information about you has become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future.
The conspirators offered the hacked data for sale on the Internet to sow fear among Ukrainians about the security of government systems, the Justice Ministry said.
If convicted, Stigal, who remains at large, faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.
To help apprehend Stigal and bring him to justice, the U.S. State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information on his whereabouts or his malicious cyber activity.
