The US Department of Justice revealed on Monday that the United States has accused 6 members of the Russian military intelligence of launching cyber attacks in the world, targeting the electricity grid in Ukraine and the elections in France in 2017.
"The six elements are accused of launching a series of information attacks that are the most destructive and causing disturbances, and it is the highest operational group attributed to one group," John Demers, national security official at the Ministry of Justice, said in a press conference.
Demers added that the defendants also supported the piracy operation in the days leading up to the French elections in 2017.
The American judiciary says that these pirates carried out their operations between 2015 and 2019, and that their first operation was an attack on the electricity grid in Ukraine, which caused the population to deprive the heating during the winter.
It is also suspected that they launched an attack with the "Notbetia" virus in June 2017, which infected thousands of computers around the world, causing disruption to specific-functional infrastructures, such as the means of monitoring the nuclear accident site in Chernobyl and the ports of Bombay and Amsterdam.
On the other hand, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the US and British accusations regarding the involvement of Russian pirates in cyber attacks were unfounded.