Special Report: More than 5,000 pages of documents from a Moscow-based contractor offer unusual glimpses into Russia's planning and training for security services, including the notorious hacking group Sandworm.
Russian intelligence agencies worked with a Moscow-based defense contractor to strengthen their ability to launch cyberattacks, sow disinformation and surveil sections of the internet, according to thousands of pages of confidential corporate documents.
These officials and experts could not find definitive evidence that the systems have been deployed by Russia or been used in specific cyberattacks, but the documents describe testing and payments for work done by Vulkan for the Russian security services and several associated research institutes. The company has both government and civilian clients.
This includes programs to create fake social media pages and software that can identify and stockpile lists of vulnerabilities in computer systems across the globe for possible future targeting. “These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight,” said John Hultquist, the vice president for intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, which reviewed selections of the document at the request of The Post and its partners.
“You don’t find network diagrams and design documents like this very often. It really is very intricate stuff. This wasn’t meant to be ever seen publicly,” said one of the Western intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid assessments of sensitive findings. “But it makes sense to pay attention. Because you better understand what the GRU is trying to do.”
References to the company also can be found in VirusTotal, a Google-owned service with a database of malicious software that is a resource for security researchers. A promotional video on the company website portrays Vulkan as a scrappy tech start-up that “solves corporate problems” and has a “comfortable work environment.” It ends by declaring that Vulkan’s goal is to “make the world a better place.”“The work was fun. We used the latest technologies,” said one former employee in an interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “The people were really clever. And the money was good.
. The consortium examining the documents has 11 members — including The Post, the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, iStories, Paper Trail Media and Süddeutsche Zeitung — from eight countries. One effort included tweets in 2016 — when Russian disinformation operatives were working to boost Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and undermine Democrat Hillary Clinton — linking to a website claiming that Clinton had made “a desperate attempt” to “regain her lead” by seeking foreign support in Italy.
A 2017 draft manual for one of the Amezit systems offers instructions on the “preparation, placement and promotion of special materials” — most likely propaganda distributed using fake social media accounts, telephone calls, emails and text messages.One of the mock-ups in a 2016 design document allows a user to hover a cursor over an object on a map and display IP addresses, domain names and operating systems as well as other information about “physical objects.
Emails suggest that the Amezit systems were at least tested by Russian intelligence agencies by 2020. A company email dated May 16, 2019, describes feedback from the customer and desires for changes in the program. A spreadsheet marks which parts of the project have been finished. Joe Slowik, the threat intelligence manager at the cybersecurity company Huntress, said Skan probably was designed to work in tandem with other software.
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