The Department of Justice announced today that they had completed their investigation of the Russian claims of hackers in the United States conducting cyberattacks on Russian railroad. “All of the names provided by Russian Ministry of Justice (Minyust) are employees of Red Cyberteers, a company registered in Austin, TX.,” DOJ spokesperson Della Street told reporters this morning; “We have found no evidence of criminal activity by the personnel identified by Minyust.”
According to a press release from Red Cyberteers, the company is providing cyber warfare support to the government of Ukraine through the Ukrainian Consulate in Dallas, TX. Personnel operating on this contract are working through servers located in the Consulate. Reed Fleming, CEO of Red Cyberteers, confirmed that the cyber warfare operations included interfering with the operation of certain railroads in Western Russia.
Neither the Consulate in Dallas, nor the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington were willing to discuss the operations be conducted by Red Cyberteers. The Embassy did release a statement that in response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the Ukrainian government was taking all available legal measures to counter the illegal Russian military incursion into their country.
A lawyer from DOJ speaking on background said that while the federal government has long rejected the issuance of letters of marque and reprisals in naval matters, there have been no laws or conventions that would prevent it from providing authority to private sector individuals for conducting cyberattacks on enemies of this country in the event of war. The lawyer explained that the main concern about the use of naval privateers has long been the lack of control over the actions of these ships under the guise of letters of marque. Stricter control of cyber operations under such grants could allow the government to conclude that such ‘cyber privateer’ activities would be an acceptable method of executing cyberattacks on our enemies. The briefer reminded the audience that the United States was no currently at war with anyone and the Federal government has not been accused of issuing any letters of cyber marque.
Fleming confirmed that Ukrainian military officers oversaw all aspects of the cyber operations being conducted by Red Cyberteers employees. “Additionally, I insisted that our contract with Ukraine specifies that we will not accept any orders to, or conduct operations designed to, kill people,” Reed said; “We are civilian employees of the Ukrainian government, working on property that is internationally recognized as territory of Ukraine, against an adversary that is conducting offensive military operations on Ukrainian soil. In short, there is no reason to consider us to be cybercriminals, and the DOJ has clearly indicated that they agree with that assessment.”
The Russian Embassy in Washington refused to provide a comment on this story.
