U.S Charges Russian Intelligence Officers over Westinghouse Hack

On October 4, 2018, USA indicted 7 officers of Russian intelligence for allegedly conniving towards breaking into PCs of Westinghouse Electric Co a nuclear energy firm followed with accessing data from them. The indictment was also for hacking sporting federations, anti-doping watchdogs and one global agency investigating into how chemical weapons were being used.

Actually according to Dutch officials, they'd thwarted a plan some agents of Russian intelligence tried carrying out for an intrusion into the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons based in Hague during April. In hours the U.S Department of Justice's indictment followed regarding conniving towards carrying out PC abuse and fraud as well as money laundering and wire fraud.

The Justice Department stated that a Russian officer from the seven indicted conducted online scrutiny after which they filched login details belonging to workers of Westinghouse, notably employees who were engaged in the sophisticated nuclear reactor enhancement divisions along with fresh reactor technology divisions.

Charges were also levied against 3 Russian military officials from the mentioned 7 within one separate case that the office of Robert Mueller Special Counsel brought in over their involvement with hacking operations crafted for manipulating the presidential election. National Security Division chief John Demers under DOJ stated that even as the defendants were common in the two cases, the one ushered in on October 4th didn't have connection with Mueller's office.

According to prosecutors, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov one Russian official of the 7 carried out technical inspection of Westinghouse on November 20, 2014, while acquired hold over network ports, domains and IP addressees. There was also inspection of Westinghouse for gaining knowledge regarding the employees' contribution to nuclear energy studies.

Back during December, DOJ stated Yermakov and alliances dispatched phishing electronic mails to 5-or-more employees of the firm to get them to visit a fake website spoofing Westinghouse followed with giving their log-ins.

The indictment blamed the connivers with dispatching spear-phishing electronic mails to Westinghouse employees' private accounts. Two employees opened the malicious web-links. However, the company stated it hadn't found any clue about the phishing scam targeting the employees for hacking into Westinghouse's computers turned out successful.

» SPAMfighter News - 10/12/2018