Department prosecutors linked the espionage operation to a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and He accused hackers of stealing documents from hundreds of computer systems belonging to NATO member governments.
Journalists’ information was also stolen. American news organizations and other select targets of interest to the Kremlin.
Specific targets were not named in the Washington court documents, but US officials described the espionage campaign and said the Russian operation relied on a malicious program called Snake to access computers..
to Officials added that they had been investigating the software for more than ten years, but that the Russian FSB had changed it several times.Prevents Washington from shutting down operations.
The Justice Department, under the orders of a federal judge in Brooklyn, launched an operation using technological tools that effectively led to the destruction of the malicious program. Federal officials today expressed confidence that the FSB software cannot be rebuilt.