Displaying items by tag: spying

Dutch military intelligence disrupted a Russian cyber-attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The attack, which was thwarted with the help of British officials, came after Russia had also attempted remote attacks on on the UK Foreign Office in March and the Porton Down chemical weapons facility in April. Both attacks were unsuccessful. The Dutch defence minister said that four Russian intelligence officials from the GRU’s cybercrime unit, known as Sandworm, had been expelled from the Netherlands after being caught spying on the chemical weapons body in April. Jeremy Hunt said that a number of hackers widely known to have been conducting attacks around the world were covers for Russia’s GRU intelligence service, and their attacks had been undertaken with the consent and knowledge of the Kremlin. A Russian spokeswoman dismissed the hacking accusations as ‘big fantasies’.