The
governments said in a joint advisory that Unit 26165, the arm of Russia's
military spy agency whose officers were indicted for allegedly breaking into
Democratic Party emails, had been using VPNs and Tor - a privacy-focused
network - to conduct "widespread, distributed, and anonymized brute force
access attempts against hundreds of government and private sector
targets."
The
advisory did not identify any of the targets by name, saying only that they
were mainly in the United States and Europe and included government offices,
political parties, energy companies, law firms and media organizations.
The Russian
Embassy in Washington did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Russian officials routinely reject allegations that they employ hackers to spy
on rival nations.
Unit 26165
first came into the public eye in mid-2018, when a dozen members were indicted
during special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference
in the election that brought former president Donald Trump to power. More
members of the unit were indicted later that year for allegedly hacking
international anti-doping officials.
The unit
has regularly made the news since. Last year it was called out by U.S.
officials for allegedly using malicious software to break into Linux systems.
Thursday's
joint advisory was released by the U.S. National Security Agency, the
Department of Homeland Security's cyber arm, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and the British National Cyber Security Centre.
Spy
agencies in the United States and Britain have been increasingly vocal about
calling out foreign hacking, especially when it allegedly originates from
Russia or China.
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