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The Dutch government has accused Russia's military intelligence service, the GRU, of targeting the global chemical weapons watchdog group, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, through the UN's military watchdog. a cyber operation foiled.
Dutch officials have given unprecedented details in describing the alleged Russian operation at a joint press conference of the Dutch government and the United Kingdom in The Hague.
Bijleveld-Schouten described as "very disturbing" four Russian intelligence officers who were deported on 13 April, the same day the plot was detected.
They left behind business, she said, which also allowed the Dutch to discover that one of the agents' laptops had made connections with Brazil, Switzerland and Malaysia, trying to interfere with the investigation into the killing of Flight 17 of Malaysia Airlines in East of Ukraine in 2014.
Dutch counterintelligence chief Major-General Onno Eichelsheim named the four suspected Russian officers Aleksei Morenets and Evgenii Serebriakov – who had very similar passport numbers, said Oleg Sotnikov and Alexey Minin.
The alleged agents were traveling with diplomatic passports, Eichelsheim said.
In comments made before the UK / UK joint press conference, Russia rejected Britain's claim that the GRU was behind a worldwide campaign cyber attacks.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the accusations were "false" and an attempt to mix cyber-piracy allegations with a conspiracy against Russian sport.
"Aware of security"
Speaking to reporters, Eichelsheim, head of Dutch counterintelligence, gave a detailed description of what the four alleged officers of the GRU were doing when their operation was disrupted.
The four agents arrived in the Netherlands on April 10, rented a car the next day and parked it in the hotel car park as close as possible to the headquarters of the OPCW in The Hague said Eichelsheim.
"They were doing exploration work for a near-access hacking operation," he said.
"We know for sure that they were not on holiday in the Netherlands, they were carrying a lot of phones, different sizes, different brands, they had a lot of them personally," he said. . "Morenets tried to destroy the phone, or at least break it, when the operation was destroyed … it did not completely succeed."
Sotnikov had a large sum of money on him: 20,000 euros and 20,000 dollars, said Eichelsheim. "This is not an amount I keep on vacation," he said.
"They were very security conscious," said the Dutch official, adding that they had taken the garbage out of their hotel room.
"In the trunk of Citron C3 (the car they rented), we recognized high-quality, high-quality equipment for hacking wifi channels," he said. "The main element is of course the antenna … which has to access the network, in this case the OPCW network. The antenna is oriented towards the network. ; OPCW ".
A battery to increase the power of their equipment was purchased on April 11th. "This battery was active at the back of the Marriott hotel car," said Eichelsheim.
"This immediately endangered the OPCW network," he said.
"It's my job that this type of cyber-operation can not be successful and that's why we decided to disrupt the operations of the GRU and the four men were accompanied to leave the country. protect the OPCW and be able to avoid serious damage to the OPCW, "said Eichelsheim.
"We must not forget that at that time, the OIAC was investigating the Skripals and the Duma's chemical attack," he added, referring to attacks perpetrated in Great Britain respectively. Brittany and Syria.
Nerve agent
Britain has accused the GRU of poisoning former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia with a military-grade nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury on 4 March.
British investigators have also officially linked the attack on the Skripals to June 30 poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, a couple residing in Amesbury, near Salisbury. Sturgess passed away on July 8 after applying a substance on her wrists from a vial of perfume discovered by Rowley.
The Kremlin has always rejected British official allegations.
In early September, the British authorities published the names "Ruslan Boshirov" and "Alexander Petrov" as suspected intoxication. Prime Minister Theresa May and the British authorities believe that the men were traveling under pseudonyms.
GRU hackers blamed
In statements Thursday, British, Australian and New Zealand authorities attributed four high-profile cyber-attacks to computer hackers supported by GRU. The attacks targeted four sectors that have an impact on citizens' everyday lives: democracy, transport, the media and sports. They were:
Bad bunny
The Bad Rabbit ransomware attack in 2017 is widespread worldwide, in Russia and Ukraine. Ransomware attacks involve threatening a user's files or accessing a computer in exchange for ransom.
In the case of Bad Rabbit, hackers hid the ransomware software as an update to the Adobe software before locking the computers and demanding money to allow users to recover their files.
World Anti-Doping Agency hack
The AMA attack resulted in the release of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs) granted to sports stars including four-time American gold medalist Simone Biles and Venus and Serena tennis sisters Williams.
Attack of DNC
Attack of a TV station
The statements accused Russia of stealing content and illegally accessing email accounts from a small British TV channel based in July and August 2015. The station was not named .
Richard Allen Greene of CNN, Mary Ilyushina and Zahra Ullah contributed to this report.
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