Russian hackers infect 500,000 devices around globe for cyber-attack on Ukraine

Russian hackers have infected at least 500,000 routers and storage devices in dozens of countries with malware, probably preparing to launch a cyber-attack on Ukraine. Reuters reported this.

The U.S. government said late on Wednesday that it would seek to wrestle hundreds of thousands of infected routers and storage devices from the control of hackers who security researchers warned were planning to use the “botnet” to attack Ukraine.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania gave the FBI permission to seize an internet domain that authorities charge a Russian hacking group known as Sofacy was using to control infected devices.

The order allows them to direct the devices to communicate with an FBI-controlled server, which will be used to query location to pass on to authorities around the globe who can remove malware from infected equipment.

“This operation is the first step in the disruption of a botnet that provides the Sofacy actors with an array of capabilities that could be used for a variety of malicious purposes, including intelligence gathering, theft of valuable information, destructive or disruptive attacks, and the misattribution of such activities,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement.

The U.S. government announced the takedown effort after Cisco Systems Inc early on Wednesday released a report on the hacking campaign that it said targeted devices from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear Inc, TP-Link and QNAP.

Cisco said the largest number of infections from the VPNFilter malware were in Ukraine, which led it to believe Russia was planning an attack on that country.

Cisco shared technical details with the United States and Ukraine governments as well as rivals who sell security software, hardware and services.

Ukraine’s SBU state security service responded to the report by saying it showed Russia was readying a large-scale cyber-attack ahead of the Champions League soccer final, due to be held in Kyiv on Saturday.

As it was reported earlier, Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry were outraged by the accusations of British Defense Ministry and Foreign Office of Russian involvement in cyber-attacks on Ukraine in June last year. Representatives of Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry stress that they issued a proposal to Great Britain concerning international information security. This, as Russian authorities think, could help to resist threats appearing in the info-sphere.