Reporters investigating Russian military intelligence have been targeted by highly sophisticated cyberattacks through their encrypted e-mail accounts, with evidence suggesting Moscow was responsible, the e-mail service provider ProtonMail and journalists said on Saturday.
The phishing attack, which sought to dupe users into sharing their ProtonMail passwords, was aimed at journalists from the award-winning Web site Bellingcat, which helped identify the agents who poisoned former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain.
Geneva-based ProtonMail said in a statement that “the evidence [along with independent third-party assessments] seem to suggest an attack of Russian origin.”
ProtonMail chief executive Andy Yen said that the operation “was one of the best-run phishing attacks we have ever seen.”
Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev, who led the site’s work on the Skripal case, said he had no doubt Russia’s GRU military intelligence unit was responsible and that it marked “a quantum leap” in terms of their technical sophistication.
“It was very convincing,” he said, noting that no Bellingcat reporters gave up their passwords.
ProtonMail, which describes itself as the world’s most secure e-mail provider, has become increasingly popular among journalists and others who handle sensitive information because user communications are protected by end-to-end encryption.
The Harvard-educated Yen, who worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research for five years before founding ProtonMail, said that the company could not read users’ e-mails even if it wanted to — in clear contrast with Google’s Gmail.
The phishing attacks against Bellingcat reporters occurred last week, with “e-mails sent to the targeted users claiming to be from the ProtonMail team, asking the targets to enter their ... login credentials,” the company said.
Grozev said that despite his technical savvy and awareness that he was a target, he “would have been fooled” if not for prior warning from a contact who had received a similar phishing email earlier this month.
While the assault on Bellingcat journalists was concentrated over the past few days, Grozen claimed that multiple investigators and researchers from other organizations that work on Russia have received phishing e-mails in their ProtonMail accounts since April.
Yen said that “putting a precise start date as to when other Russia journalists began to be targeted is a bit more complex and not something that we can confirm with full confidence right now.”
Yen said that ProtonMail has alerted the Swiss Federal Police and the government’s computer system security office, MELANI, about the events this week.
The company has not yet received any indication that an investigation will be launched, Yen said, noting that he was not optimistic the perpetrators would face justice, in part because Moscow was likely to protect them.
However, ProtonMail is conducting its own investigation.
Grozen said Switzerland had a duty to act, given that its .ch domain was used to carry out the phishing operation.
“It is essentially a crime within the digital territory of Switzerland,” he said, stressing that the entities who registered the malicious .ch web Wites are “traceable for [Swiss] authorities”.
Swiss Federal Police and MELANI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bellingcat, a highly regarded Britain-based investigative Web site, has used open-source technology to break a series of stories, notably concerning Russia, including major revelations in the downing of MH17 flight over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, which has also been linked to the GRU.
When a hiker fell from a 55m waterfall in wild New Zealand bush, rescuers were forced to evacuate the badly hurt woman without her dog, which could not be found. After strangers raised thousands of dollars for a search, border collie Molly was flown to safety by a helicopter pilot who was determined to reunite the pet and the owner. A week earlier, an emergency rescue helicopter found the woman with bruises and lacerations after a fall at a rocky spot at the waterfall on the South Island’s West Coast. She was airlifted on March 24, but they were forced to
CONFIDENCE BOOSTER: ’After parkour ... you dare to do a lot of things that you think only young people can do,’ a 67-year-old parkour enthusiast said In a corner of suburban Singapore, Betty Boon vaults a guardrail, crawls underneath a slide, executes forward shoulder rolls and scales a steep slope, finishing the course to applause. “Good job,” the 69-year-old’s coach cheers. This is “geriatric parkour,” where about 20 retirees learned to tackle a series of relatively demanding exercises, building their agility and enjoying a sense of camaraderie. Boon, an upbeat grandmother, said learning parkour has aided her confidence and independence as she ages. “When you’re weak, you will be dependent on someone,” she said after sweating it out with her parkour classmates in suburban Toa Payoh,
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
Chinese dissident artist Gao Zhen (高兟), famous for making provocative satirical sculptures of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東), was tried on Monday over accusations of “defaming national heroes and martyrs,” his wife and a rights group said. Gao, 69, who was detained in 2024 during a visit from the US, faces a maximum three-year prison sentence, said his wife, Zhao Yaliang (趙雅良), and Shane Yi, a researcher at the Chinese Human Rights Defenders group which operates outside the nation. The closed-door, one-day trial took place at Sanhe City People’s Court in Hebei Province neighboring the capital, Beijing, and ended without a
RSS