US DoJ Charges 12 Russian Intelligence With Cryptocurrency-Funded Elections ‘Interference’
The U.S. Bureau of Justice (DoJ) released a prosecution on July 13 accusing twelve Russian nationals of carrying out government violations — subsidized by cryptocurrencies — with the point of “interfering” in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.
As per the DoJ’s declaration, Russian authorities from two units of the Russian government’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) utilized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) — which they supposedly mined and acquired by “other means” — to fuel efforts to hack into computer systems related with the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, and U.S. election-related state boards and technology organizations.
A grand jury in the District of Columbia, alongside the FBI’s cyber groups in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and the National Security Division allege that the authorities utilized cryptocurrency with a specific goal to purchase accounts and servers that enabled them to illicitly get to the associated networks through a spearphishing campaign. The Russian authorities supposedly then got “thousands of stolen emails and documents” that they released through the domain DCLeaks.com while advancing themselves as “American hacktivists.”
The DoJ reports that the arraignment does not assert that the affirmed criminal activities “modified the vote tally or changed the result of the 2016 decisions.”
The prosecution comprises of eleven criminal accusations, including the claim that the defendants laundered more than $95,000 through cryptocurrencies in order to finance their hacking initiatives. The DoJ notes that bitcoin mining activities that paid for the DCLeaks.com domain also supported the spearphishing attacks.
The DoJ has just been engaged with cryptocurrency related investigation, as the government body opened an investigation concerning Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) price control toward the end of May.
Prior this week, U.S. President Donald Trump released an official request for another anti-crime task team that will concentrate on digital currency frauds.
