The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that it had indicted four Russian men, including three Russian intelligence officers, for alleged hacking campaigns that targeted hundreds of energy companies around the world from 2012 to 2018.
The indictments cover activity that occurred years ago, but they highlight Russian hacking capabilities against critical infrastructure at a time when US officials are on high alert for Russian cyberattacks and President Joe Biden meets with European allies to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine.
"Russian state-sponsored hackers pose a serious and persistent threat to critical infrastructure both in the United States and around the world," Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a release. "Although the criminal charges unsealed today reflect past activity, they make crystal clear the urgent ongoing need for American businesses to harden their defenses and remain vigilant."
In one indictment, an employee of a Russian Defense Ministry-affiliated research institute is accused of assisting in the 2017 hacking of a Saudi Arabian oil refinery. According to the Justice Department, programmer Evgeny Viktorvich Gladkikh wrote code that targeted safety systems, causing the refinery to shut down twice.
In the second indictment, three officers of Russia's FSB intelligence agency are accused of hacking energy companies in over 100 countries, including the U.S., to aid the Russian government in maintaining clandestine access to critical infrastructure systems for future exploitation. From 2012 to 2017, the three are accused of conducting multiple hacking campaigns to gain access to networks of companies in the energy sector, including supply chain management companies, oil and gas companies, nuclear power plants, and utilities.
The Justice Department charged the trio with conducting sophisticated spearphishing attempts to target over 3,300 users at over 500 US and international companies. The alleged successes of the groups include compromising the indirect business network of a nuclear power plant in Kansas, though they are not accused of breaching the plant's critical industrial control systems.
All four indicted men are understood to be in Russia.
The other Russian hacking group mentioned in Thursday's news, which was involved in the facility's shutdown in Saudi Arabia in 2017, then attempted to hack into the computers of a U.S. firm "that managed similar critical infrastructure entities in the United States," according to the Justice Department. According to a senior Justice Department official, the hacking attempt was unsuccessful.
The same hacking organization looked into the computer networks of U.S. electric utilities that run liquefied natural gas plants in December, CNN previously reported.
