Media: Russian FSB officers suspected of passing information on Russian hackers to the US
Employees of the Center for Information Security (CIS) of the FSB, who were arrested for treason, are suspected of transferring the names of Russian hackers to American intelligence, as reported by Dozhd TV channel, citing sources in the FSB that indicated this information led to the son of a State Duma Deputy, Roman Seleznev, being detained in Maldives as well as the detention of other cybercriminals around the world.
The TV channel learned of the accusation against the Deputy Head of the FSB Center for Information Security, Sergey Mikhailov, the CIS operative, Dmitry Dokuchaev, the head of one of the Kaspersky Lab's departments, Ruslan Stoyanov, and Georgy Fomchenkov, whom Reuters states is a former FSB agent.
So far, they have only been charged with treason (Section 275 of the Criminal Code), but the essence of the charge has not been disclosed. Two sources of Dozhd close to the FSB as well as a representative of a large cyber security company say that the accused were transferring the names of Russian hackers to American intelligence agencies, who were later detained around the world.
According to the interlocutors of the channel, as a result of the receipt of information from the "Mikhailov group," Roman Seleznev was arrested in 2014 in the Maldives. Roman Seleznev is the son of a State Duma Deputy from the LDPR Party Valery Seleznev. He has now been found guilty in the United States of committing cyber-fraud for over $170 million and sentenced to 27 years in prison.
One of the prosecution witnesses in the Mikhailov case was the owner of Chronopay, Pavel Vrublevsky, who in 2013 was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for organizing DDoS attacks. Dozhd received this information from a source close to Stoyanov and confirmed it with Vrublevsky himself.
In February, Reuters reported that in his testimony, Vrublevsky accused Mikhailov and others of sending intelligence about Vrublevsky's business through foreign companies to US intelligence agencies. Dozhd’s source who is close to the FSB, believes that Mikhailov committed treason for mercenary reasons. According to the interlocutor of the channel, in the cyber community this is believed to likely be a silent partnership between Russian special services and American colleagues since Russian hackers living abroad who attack foreign companies are easier to prosecute in the United States.