Ukrainian legislation enforcement authorities on Friday disclosed that it had “neutralized” a hacking group working from the town of Lviv that it mentioned acted on behalf of Russian pursuits.
The group specialised within the gross sales of 30 million accounts belonging to residents from Ukraine and the European Union on the darkish net and netted a revenue of $372,000 (14 million UAH) via digital cost techniques like YooMoney, Qiwi, and WebMoney which can be outlawed within the nation.
“Their ‘wholesale shoppers’ have been pro-kremlin propagandists,” the Safety Service of Ukraine (SSU) mentioned in a press launch. “It was them who used the obtained identification information of Ukrainian and overseas residents to unfold faux ‘information’ from the entrance and sow panic.”
The aim behind the marketing campaign was “large-scale destabilization in a number of nations,” it acknowledged, including the hacked accounts have been used to propagate false details about the socio-political scenario in Ukraine and the E.U.
Searches carried out on the suspects’ houses revealed magnetic disks containing private information in addition to pc gear, cell phones, SIM playing cards, and flash drives that exhibited proof of illicit actions.
The event comes weeks after the company moved to close down two bot farms comprising practically 7,000 accounts that have been orchestrated to unfold info designed to destabilize the social and political scenario in Ukraine.
“Their principal exercise was creation and promotion of accounts in social networks and messengers,” it famous. “The group used the bots to unfold panic within the area, for instance, by disseminating disinformation and pretend information from the entrance.”
