Russian Hacking

The Justice Department announced charges Monday against Russian intelligence officers in cyberattacks that targeted a French presidential election, the Winter Olympics in South Korea and American businesses. The case implicates the same Kremlin unit that interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections, but is not related to the November vote.

The indictment accuses the six defendants, all said to be current and former officers in the Russian military intelligence agency known as the GRU, of hacks that prosecutors say were aimed at furthering the Kremlin’s geopolitical interests and in destabilizing or punishing perceived enemies. All told, the attacks caused billions of dollars in losses and disrupted a broad cross-section of life, including health care in Pennsylvania, a power grid serving hundreds of thousands of customers in Ukraine and a French election that saw the late-stage disclosure of hacked emails.

The Russians were hacking into the 2018 and 2020 Olympics because they were mad that they had been caught and punished for widespread doping thier athelites.

And this:

Washington imposed sanctions on Friday on a Russian research institute tied to the development of a dangerous computer program capable of causing catastrophic industrial damage, a move that Russia called illegitimate.

The U.S. Treasury Department alleged that the Russian government-backed Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics - also known by its Russian acronym, TsNIIKhM - was responsible for “building customized tools that enabled the attack” on an unidentified petrochemical facility in the Middle East in 2017.

The attack electrified the cybersecurity community when it was made public by researchers that year because - unlike typical digital intrusions aimed at stealing data or holding it for ransom - it appeared aimed at causing physical damage to the facility itself by disabling its safety system.

One might wonder why it took the State Department three fricking years to react to this.

As for the rest, has it not become clear to everyone, by now, that whether or not Trump and McConnell cozy up to Putin, that we are back to being in a cold war with the Russians? The hacking is not that much different from when the Russians were providing support to the Red Brigades (Italy) and the Red Army Faction (West Germany) terrorist groups.

Russia will never be a partner with the West. At best, it's an adversay. At the worst, it's an enemy.