04/17/2024 – 22:55
Sandworm, a group of hackers active in Ukraine and linked to Russian intelligence services, is becoming a major global threat, a major cybersecurity company warned on Wednesday (17).
Mandiant, a subsidiary of Google, indicated in a report that it had identified malicious operations carried out by this group in several places around the world considered political, military or economic hot spots for Russian interests.
“We observed the group carrying out espionage operations in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Latin America,” Mandiant researchers indicated in their report.
“With a record number of people participating in national elections in 2024, Sandworm's track record of attempting to interfere in democratic processes further elevates the severity of the threat the group may pose in the short term,” the report states.
Five years ago, a dozen Russian military intelligence officers were cited in the United States on charges stemming from their alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election won by Donald Trump, according to the FBI.
The Republican billionaire will run for president again this year, after losing his re-election bid in 2020.
Sandworm has carried out repeated attacks against Western electoral institutions, including those of current or future NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) member countries, according to Mandiant.
The group “attempted to interfere with democratic processes in certain countries by leaking politically sensitive information and deploying malicious software to access electoral systems and falsify data,” Mandiant determined.
According to researchers, the Russian army regularly turns to this group in its war against Ukraine. They claim that Sandworm “is actively involved in the full spectrum of espionage, attack and influence operations.”
In 2022, Ukraine announced that it had thwarted a Russian cyberattack carried out by Sandworm, targeting one of its largest energy facilities.
“We assess with high confidence that [o Sandworm] it is considered by the Kremlin as a flexible instrument of power, capable of serving Russia's national interests and ambitions, including efforts to undermine democratic processes around the world,” the researchers conclude.
#Russian #cyberattacks #pose #global #39threat39 #Google #subsidiary