According to media reports, Russian secret services are planning worldwide hacking operations together with a Moscow IT company, which should also enable attacks on critical infrastructure facilities. According to research by a team of journalists from “Spiegel”, “ZDF”, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, “Standard” and other international media, this is the result of a data leak from the Russian security apparatus. The leaked documents describe an offensive cyber program, for example, which is also intended to enable attacks on critical infrastructure facilities, reports the “Spiegel”.
According to the documents, one of the goals of the program is to use special software to derail trains or paralyze airport computers. However, it is not clear whether the program is currently being used against Ukraine, for example.
Thousands of internal documents
The data leak involved thousands of pages of internal documents from the Moscow IT company NTC Vulkan, such as project plans, software descriptions, instructions, internal emails and the company’s bank transfer documents. According to the report, the documents show how Russian secret services plan and carry out worldwide hacking operations with the help of private companies.
An anonymous source first leaked the majority of the “Vulkan Files” to the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” shortly after the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and later made the data available to other media, reports the “Spiegel”. The source cited Russia’s war of aggression and Vulkan’s close ties to secret services as the motive. Several Western intelligence services have confirmed to the research team that the documents are authentic.
