An employee of a Russian cybersecurity firm, who disagreed with his country’s invasion of Ukraine, passed thousands of documents to a journalist from the South German Zeitung. The result of the analysis of the files, the veracity of which has been confirmed by Western intelligence agencies and cybersecurity companies, shows that NTC Vulkan worked for Russian agencies in activities such as cyber-attacks and disinformation campaigns, as well as being able to cause chaos in the infrastructures, through a power grid or attack an airport. Hours earlier, and with no apparent connection to the case, Russian authorities arrested the correspondent of Wall Street Journal in Moscow Evan Gershkovich, on suspicion of espionage.
“The company is doing bad things and the Russian government is cowardly and unequal,” said the official who provided the documents to the German journalist shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian, who spoke to the journalist via an encrypted chat application, said he was “angry about the invasion of Ukraine and the terrible things happening there” and expressed hope that the information he would share would show ” what’s going on behind the scenes”. closed doors”.
The German journalist was in possession of more than 5,000 pages of documents dated between 2016 and 2021, including manuals, technical sheets and details of the software Vulkan designed for the Russian military and secret services, as well as internal emails, financial data and contracts. It was part of the outsourced company’s duties to develop programs to create fake pages on social networks and software to identify vulnerabilities in computer systems around the world for possible future targets.
Given the size and complexity of the documents, the German shared them with the consortium of investigative journalists Paper Trail Media, responsible for the Panama Papers, among other things. Coordinated by The mirrorjournalists from Le monde, The Washington Post, The protector, of standard, etc. reveal, after a year of investigation, some hitherto secret acts of the Russian military and spy agencies. These include work for Sandworm, a group of hackers employed by the Russian state, suspected of causing blackouts in Ukraine, NotPetya, the malware which in 2017 turned Windows operating systems upside down and caused billions in damage, or even spawned the Macronleaks, an attempt to interfere in the French presidential election, also in 2017.
The documents shed light on two projects, Amezit and Skan, aimed at running disinformation campaigns on social networks using automated systems to create fake profiles and map targets vulnerable to piracy. Another Vulkan program, Crystal-2, has tools for conducting computer attacks against critical infrastructure, including energy and transportation networks.
The decision of a Russian court to carry out the preventive detention of journalist Evan Gerskovich, on suspicion of espionage, and without the presence of his lawyer, prompted US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to express “extreme concern” and to condemn the Kremlin’s policy of “intimidating, suppressing and punishing the voices of journalists and civil society”. Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, called the accusation “ridiculous.”
The 31-year-old journalist started working in Russia in 2017, first at the Moscow Times, then at the AFP. He was arrested in Yekaterinburg, where he reported on how the “special military operation” was perceived by civilians.
Runaway father arrested in Belarus
The saga of Alexei Moskalyov came to an end when he was arrested in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. A little over a year ago, his daughter Masha, then 12 years old, dared to create an anti-war message during a lesson in which the class was asked to make drawings in support of the Russian army in Ukraine.
From that moment on, their lives turned upside down: the house was searched, interrogated, he was fined for discrediting the Russian army in comments on social networks, and the daughter refused to go back to school. Facing the siege, both took refuge in a village on the outskirts of their homeland, Yefremov, in the Tula region, south of Moscow. But the 54-year-old Moskalyov was finally tracked down by the police on March 1. Masha was sent to a “rehabilitation center”, and her father was placed under house arrest. He had fled the day before he was sentenced to two years in prison in absentia.
Von der Leyen warns Beijing
How China handles the war in Ukraine will shape the European Union’s ties with Beijing, the European Commission president said. “Any peace plan that actually consolidates Russia’s annexations is simply not a viable plan,” Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech in Brussels ahead of her and French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China.
“We have to be honest on this point: how China continues to deal with Putin’s war will be a determining factor in advancing EU-China relations.” The leader also said that the EU does not want to distance itself from Beijing, but rather to reduce the risks of the bilateral relationship.
Source: DN
