Britain accuses Russia's FSB of hundreds of hacker attacks on politicians, journalists, scientists

The United Kingdom has accused Russia's FSB of an ongoing campaign of cyber hacking, the BBC reports.

According to the British authorities, the FSB has conducted hundreds of targeted hacker attacks on politicians, civil servants, think tank employees, journalists, scientists, and other representatives of public life. These included hacking personal emails and creating fake accounts. According to the publication, a member of the British Parliament was among the victims.

The British authorities suspect that a group linked to the FSB has been stealing information from political and public figures since at least 2015. The group, known as the 16th Center, is allegedly still active.

In addition, the British authorities said that the hacker group stole materials related to the 2019 elections.

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations of its involvement in such activities. In particular, it was reported that documents on trade between the United States and the United Kingdom were stolen. The documents were stolen from the email of former Secretary of Commerce Liam Fox. The stolen information included six tranches of documents detailing British trade negotiations with the United States.

At the time, however, no specific group was named as being behind the attack. Now it is being linked to the wider activities of the same group, which is linked to the FSB, the BBC notes.

Foreign Secretary David Cameron said the group's actions were "completely unacceptable". "Despite repeated attempts, they have failed. We will continue to work with our allies to expose Russia's covert cyber activities and hold it to account for its actions," the politician said.

On December 7, Foreign Secretary Leo Docherty told the House of Commons that the Russian ambassador had been summoned to court and that sanctions had been imposed on two people. One of them is an active FSB officer.

British officials met with the deputy head of the Russian embassy and expressed the UK's deep concern over the cyberattacks. The US is also expected to announce sanctions against the group.

Background. As a reminder, Ukraine recently took part in a large-scale NATO cyber defense exercise. The goal was to increase the resilience of NATO countries to cyber threats, as well as their ability to conduct joint cyber operations.