On July 13, unknown hackers broke into the server of the Moscow IT company “Sytek” and posted a so-called “job-face” on its website. It is assumed that hackers deleted 7.5 terabytes of data, but before that they partially copied them. Then they shared them with journalists from several publications. Following the results of familiarization with the archives, the Russian service of the BBC concluded that “Sitek” is a non-public contractor for the Russian special services.
Mosquito, Nadezhda, Nautilus: hackers revealed the essence of the projects of a secret FSB contractor https://t.KoKbBkSP3uqY
– bbcrussian (@bbcrussian) July 19, 2019
So, it turned out that "Sitek" carried out at least 20 non-public IT projects commissioned by the Russian special services, in particular – military unit No. 71330, the newspaper writes. This part, according to experts from the International Center for Defense and Security in Tallinn, is part of the 16th Directorate of the Federal Security Service of Russia, which is engaged in electronic intelligence, but this information has not been officially confirmed.
In the documents reviewed by the BBC, the address of the object on which the employees of Saitek worked is indicated: Samotechnaya Moscow, 9 . It is noteworthy that in the past, it was there that the 16th Directorate of the KGB of the USSR was located, and then the Federal Agency for Governmental Communication and Information under the President of the Russian Federation (FAPSI). Note that the department was abolished in 2003 and its powers were transferred to the FSB and other special services.
It is worth adding that in the papers received by the BBC, there were no marks about state secrets or secrecy.
The first project "Nautilus-S" was developed in 2012 by order of the Research Institute "Kvant", which is under the jurisdiction of the FSB, the newspaper writes. Its purpose is to de-anonymize users of the Tor network and create a “database of users and computers actively using Tor networks”.
It is noteworthy that quite recently Russia came out on top by the number of active Tor users per day. This figure exceeded 600 thousand people.
A small part of the documents on Nautilus-S were published by hackers from the Digital Revolution group, who in December 2018 took responsibility for hacking the server of the Kvant research institute.
All of us, journalists, students and even pensioners, are under the supervision of the FSB. Join us, as well as $ 0V1ru, protecting our future! They will not drown our voices! @tjournal @Dobrokhotov @bbcrussian @ unkn0wnerror pic.twitter.com/HUYDas7FSN
– DigitalRevolution (@ D1G1R3V) July 18, 2019
An earlier version of the project "Nautilus" [without "C"] was devoted to collecting information about users of social networks Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, says the BBC. This project was allegedly active from 2009 to 2010, and the total cost of the work, if you believe the documents, was 18.5 million rubles. Nevertheless, it is not reliably known whether Sytek has found a customer.
Within the framework of the Reward project [2013-2014], Siteca employees tried to detect vulnerabilities in the Bittorrent network protocol, the developer of which was acquired by TRON founder Justin Sun, and also investigated the Jabber, OpenFT and ED2K (or donkey) protocols, edition.
Thus, Sytek allegedly investigated the “possibilities of developing a complex of penetration and covert use of resources of peering and hybrid networks”. In the documents transmitted to journalists, the decision of the Russian government on the state defense order for these years was indicated as the basis for such works, although the actual customer is unknown.
Another project codenamed “Mentor” [2013-2014] was aimed at monitoring email at the customer’s choice. In the documents that came to the BBC, it says that the Mentor program can be configured to check the mail of the required respondents at a specified time interval and to collect an “intellectual group of extraction” according to the given word combinations. The customer allegedly indicated in the documents the military unit No. 71330.
The Nadezhda project [2013-2014] assumed the accumulation and visualization of information about the connections of the Russian Internet segment with the global network. The customer was again the military unit number 71330, writes the BBC. It is worth recalling that the law on the "sovereign Internet" will come into force already in November. The exclusive material BlockchainJournal made out in detail whether Russia could, if desired, repeat the path of China, where there is a so-called Great Chinese firewall .
Runet Isolation: Why Russia Can’t Repeat China’s Path
In 2015, according to the publication, the military unit No. 71330 ordered research work on the creation of a “software and hardware complex” from “Sytek” capable of anonymously searching for and collecting “Internet information materials” while hiding “informational interest”. This project was called "Mosquito".
The group that hacked the Saiteka servers calls itself 0v1ru $ . She has a Twitter account.
At the time of writing, the company's website is not working, and the authorities have not yet responded to what happened.
Earlier it became known that Roskomnadzor began sending letters to Russian providers asking for information on traffic exchange points.
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