Hacking Campaign Linked to Russian GRU
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The Council of the EU and the European Council have officially accused Russia of sponsoring cyberattacks against European Union officials, journalists, and the public. The malicious cyber activities.
Ghostwriter is a term used by the EU for an ongoing disinformation campaign and other malicious cyber activities.
Ghostwriter accesses computer systems and personal accounts and steals data.
The attacks are attributed to a Russian state-sponsored cyber-espionage group UNC1151 the works at the behest of Russia’s Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (GRU).
Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravlenie (Russian: Chief Intelligence Office). The GRU handles all military intelligence on behalf of the Russian government and is Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency.
“The European Union and its Member States strongly denounce these malicious cyber activities, which all involved must put to an end immediately. We urge the Russian Federation to adhere to the norms of responsible state behaviour in cyberspace,” says a post on the General Secretariat of the European Council’s website.
Ghostwriter activities target high-profile members of EU Parliaments, government officials, and politicians. The attacks also target journalists as well as the general public.
In June of this year, Poland’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MCS) said that Ghostwriter had compromised over 4,000 email accounts. About 100 of them belonged to current and former government officials.
MCS went on to say that this was part of the ghostwriter campaign and the work of the Russian government.
In July the U.S. Department of Commerce has sanctioned six Russian entities over national security concerns. The companies allegedly cooperated with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the GRU to facilitate malicious cyber activities
The Ghostwriter campaign were also connected by Germany to the GRU earlier this month.
