USA: GRU Officers Used Crypto in Cyber Attacks

Seven employees of the Russian GRU are suspected of cyber attacks and other illegal activities using digital currencies. This was announced by the US Department of Justice. Russian intelligence officials are accused of stealing personal information and publishing it in order to influence public opinion.

Three of the suspects were among those employees of the GRU who were accused of interfering in the US presidential elections this summer. Four more are the same people who were sent from the Netherlands in April suspected of an attempt to attack the headquarters of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. According to the American law enforcement agencies, those involved in the list launched attacks on the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Court of Arbitration, and the US Anti-Doping Agency. This is probably due to the scandal about the use of prohibited substances by Russian athletes which was the reason the country did not participate in the last Olympics.

The US authorities claim that the defendants used cryptocurrencies and accounts with fictitious names.

The text of the document states that the defendants also used various fiat currencies, including the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin was used to buy servers and register domains. Many payments were sent to US companies directly in order to avoid interaction with traditional financial institutions and, accordingly, to identify individuals and ascertain the sources of funds. According to the indictment, US government agents were able to track bitcoin transactions due to the fact that the accused carried them out from the same computers that were used to launch hacker attacks.

It is worth noting that countries where cryptocurrencies are prohibited or the regulation introduced is very tight, justify this by the fact that digital assets are used in illegal activities because of their anonymity. Already there have been several studies that prove that this is not quite true.

For example, a report published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracy of the United States concludes that digital currencies are poorly suited to finance terrorist groups. Cryptocurrencies are an impractical tool for terrorists, in particular, because most often they are located in technologically underdeveloped regions. In order to change cryptocurrencies to fiat, they need to be in a territory where they can be caught by the anti-terrorism services. Therefore, terrorist groups prefer cash.

Also, representatives of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) said that the share of bitcoin in criminal cryptocurrency transactions over the past 5 years has dropped from 90% to 10%. This does not mean that the criminals have completely abandoned the use of crypto, but its popularity in the criminal sphere has decreased markedly. Nevertheless, a new round of spy scandals may give the authorities a right to further tighten the regulation of this industry.