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Two of Moscow’s top cybersecurity officials are facing treason charges for cooperating with the CIA, according to a Russian news report.
The accusations add further intrigue to a mysterious scandal that has had the Moscow rumour mill working in overdrive for the past week, and come not long after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election and hacking the Democratic party’s servers.
Sergei Mikhailov was deputy head of the FSB security agency’s Centre for Information Security. His arrest was reported in a series of leaks over the past week, along with that of his deputy and several civilians, but Tuesday’s news went much further.
“Sergei Mikhailov and his deputy, Dmitry Dokuchayev, are accused of betraying their oath and working with the CIA,” Interfax said, quoting a source familiar with the investigation.
It is unlikely the news agency would have published the story without official sanction, though this does not necessarily mean the information is true.
The story did not make it clear whether the pair were accused of being CIA agents or merely passing on information through intermediaries.
According to earlier reports in the Russian media, Mikhailov was arrested some time ago, in theatrical fashion, during a plenary session of the top FSB leadership: a bag was placed over his head and he was marched out of the room, accused of treason.
His deputy, Dokuchayev, is believed to be a well-known Russian hacker who went by the nickname Forb, and began working for the FSB some years ago to evade jail for his hacking activities.
Together with the two FSB officers, Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of the computer incidents investigations unit at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, was also arrested several weeks ago.
Kaspersky confirmed last week that Stoyanov had been arrested and was being held in a Moscow prison, though it said the arrest was not linked to his work for the company. Interfax said four people had been arrested and a further eight were potential witnesses in the case.
It is believed that Dokuchayev and Mikhailov face treason charges, which carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The treason charge means any trial will be held in secret.
The arrests and the treason charge, so soon after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election process and hacking the Democratic party servers, have led to inevitable questions about whether the arrests are linked to the US election story.
Over the weekend the New York Times cited one former and one current US official as saying human intelligence had played a major role in helping US authorities determine that Russia was behind the hacking. The publicly released version of the official report was largely free of real evidence to back up its conclusions, though if Russian sources were involved, it is understandable this would not be made public.
While the information on the arrests has come in difficult-to-decipher chunks, it has been clear that something very strange has been going on inside the FSB. In a city where leaks on such sensitive cases are rare, several Russian outlets have been furnished with varying versions of the story by insider sources, suggesting either a carefully calibrated attempt to get information out, or factions struggling to spin the story in various ways.
The majority of leaks suggest the arrests are linked to Shaltai-Boltai, a group of hackers who had become notorious for leaking the emails of Kremlin officials online. A former journalist, Vladimir Anikeev, believed to be the ringleader of the group, is also among those arrested, according to reports.
In summer 2014 a representative of Shaltai-Boltai met the Guardian in a city outside Russia, on the understanding that neither the location nor the appearance of the man would be described in print.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...on-charges-cia
The accusations add further intrigue to a mysterious scandal that has had the Moscow rumour mill working in overdrive for the past week, and come not long after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election and hacking the Democratic party’s servers.
Sergei Mikhailov was deputy head of the FSB security agency’s Centre for Information Security. His arrest was reported in a series of leaks over the past week, along with that of his deputy and several civilians, but Tuesday’s news went much further.
“Sergei Mikhailov and his deputy, Dmitry Dokuchayev, are accused of betraying their oath and working with the CIA,” Interfax said, quoting a source familiar with the investigation.
It is unlikely the news agency would have published the story without official sanction, though this does not necessarily mean the information is true.
The story did not make it clear whether the pair were accused of being CIA agents or merely passing on information through intermediaries.
According to earlier reports in the Russian media, Mikhailov was arrested some time ago, in theatrical fashion, during a plenary session of the top FSB leadership: a bag was placed over his head and he was marched out of the room, accused of treason.
His deputy, Dokuchayev, is believed to be a well-known Russian hacker who went by the nickname Forb, and began working for the FSB some years ago to evade jail for his hacking activities.
Together with the two FSB officers, Ruslan Stoyanov, the head of the computer incidents investigations unit at cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab, was also arrested several weeks ago.
Kaspersky confirmed last week that Stoyanov had been arrested and was being held in a Moscow prison, though it said the arrest was not linked to his work for the company. Interfax said four people had been arrested and a further eight were potential witnesses in the case.
It is believed that Dokuchayev and Mikhailov face treason charges, which carry a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. The treason charge means any trial will be held in secret.
The arrests and the treason charge, so soon after US intelligence accused Russia of interfering in the US election process and hacking the Democratic party servers, have led to inevitable questions about whether the arrests are linked to the US election story.
Over the weekend the New York Times cited one former and one current US official as saying human intelligence had played a major role in helping US authorities determine that Russia was behind the hacking. The publicly released version of the official report was largely free of real evidence to back up its conclusions, though if Russian sources were involved, it is understandable this would not be made public.
While the information on the arrests has come in difficult-to-decipher chunks, it has been clear that something very strange has been going on inside the FSB. In a city where leaks on such sensitive cases are rare, several Russian outlets have been furnished with varying versions of the story by insider sources, suggesting either a carefully calibrated attempt to get information out, or factions struggling to spin the story in various ways.
The majority of leaks suggest the arrests are linked to Shaltai-Boltai, a group of hackers who had become notorious for leaking the emails of Kremlin officials online. A former journalist, Vladimir Anikeev, believed to be the ringleader of the group, is also among those arrested, according to reports.
In summer 2014 a representative of Shaltai-Boltai met the Guardian in a city outside Russia, on the understanding that neither the location nor the appearance of the man would be described in print.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...on-charges-cia