Officials say intelligence officials thwarted a series of cyber operations by GRU operatives targeting the OPCW, police and foreign office in the last 7 months
THE West has launched its fight back against Russia as Dutch authorities thwarted a GRU spy unit trying to hack into the watchdog probing the Salisbury poisoning.
Intelligence chiefs today revealed a string of cyber operations by secret operatives targeting the Foreign Office, UK police and other organisations were busted in the days and weeks after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned.
The attacks included repeated hacks on the Ministry of Defence's Porton Down lab, the UK police, and other organisations during a targeted campaign.
In a brazen bid to disrupt the probe into the Salisbury nerve agent attack, which was carried out by two Kremlin thugs in March, the spy unit was caught with a cyber hacking kit in the boot of their car.
Ordering the exposure today to embarrass Moscow, PM Theresa May said the mission “demonstrates the GRU’s disregard for the global values and rules that keep us all safe”.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt vowed that international allies were considering what “further sanctions” can be slapped on Russia.
He added on the OPCW hack: “Why would you do that if you weren’t the guilty party?”
Four spies tried to hack the Wi-Fi of the Organisation for Chemical Weapons in the Netherlands in April - after a remote attack failed.
At the time the OPCW were investigating both the Novichok poisonings in Salisbury and the Syria chemical attack.
Dutch officials said the Russian agents - named as Aleksei Morenets, Evgenii Serebriakov, Oleg Sotnikov, and Aleksey Minin, were then booted out of the country after being caught.
Two of them were planning on going on to Switzerland - where the OPCW has labs.
The four agents kicked out of the Netherlands had diplomatic passports and were snapped on CCTV arriving a few days before.
In an astonishing comparison to the Salisbury attack, two of the spooks' fake passports had sequential serial numbers while the military unit told Dutch authorities that they were on holiday.
The car they hired was packed with IT equipment including computers and Wi-Fi devices.
Receipts from GRU barracks in Moscow and phones used in Russia were found on the four as well, some of whom were IT experts. They had tens of thousands of euros and dollars on them at the time.
A laptop seized from the suspects was found to have been used in Brazil, Switzerland and Malaysia.
It was also used to target the investigation into the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine which killed 298 people.
In 2016, a 15-month investigation by the Dutch Safety Board revealed the aircraft had crashed after being hit by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile.
The shooting down of the jet happened during fighting in east of the country between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian forces following Putin's annexation of Crimea.
And following the attempted killing of Sergei Skripal and Moscow's alleged interference in the US election in 2016 - it appears the West is finally ready to stand up to Putin.
Speaking with The Sun Online, James Rogers, an expert in European geopolitics and Baltic security, branded the former KGB thug’s government “ugly and deranged”.
He said: “His regime is so wild and unruly.
“Putin’s government doesn’t seem particularly bothered about what it does whether it’s the invasion of other countries or the lies and the misinformation that it spreads through out the world.”
Skripal, a former Russian military officer who worked with MI6, and his daughter Yulia, were poisoned in Salisbury back in March, for which the British Government has formally said Vladimir Putin's Russia is responsible for.
Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov are being sought by the Met over the attack that left them fighting for their lives, and which killed Dawn Sturgess.
The attack had chilling echoes of the 2006 murder of Alexander Litvinenko - who was poisoned while dining in a London restaurant in a Kremlin-ordered hit.
THE two men suspected of being behind the Salisbury Novichok poisoning are believed to be officers of the Russian Military Intelligence Agency, the GRU.
The GRU is Russia’s largest foreign intelligence agency and deploys six times more agents abroad than the SVR, successor of the KGB’s foreign operations directorate.
The GRU also commands around 25,000 Spetsnaz troops - special military units controlled by the GRU.
These special units gather information using both overt and covert methods.
This can include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources.
Foreign intelligence gathering involves information collection relating to the political or economic activities of foreign states.
Some agencies have been involved in assassination, arms trafficking, coups d'état, and the placement of misinformation or propaganda in order to support their own or their government's interests.
Russian intelligence agencies actively recruit Russian citizens who live in foreign countries but are still fiercely loyal to their home country.
Unlike Russia′s other security and intelligence agencies, whose heads report directly to the president of Russia, the Director of GRU is subordinate to the Russian Ministry of Defence.
The UK Foreign Office says the April's attempted hack attack in Holland was "not an isolated act."
On Twitter, officials posted: "The attempted hacking happened in April. Around that time, the OPCW was working to independently verify the UK’s analysis of the chemical used in the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury. The OPCW confirmed the UK’s analysis.
"This operation in The Hague by the GRU was not an isolated act. The Unit involved, known in the Russian military as Unit 26165, has sent officers around the world to conduct brazen close access cyber operations.
Russia's ambassador has been hauled in for an explanation, but Russia's Foreign Ministry has said the allegations were "absurd" and denied an attack took place.
Britain’s ambassador to the Netherlands Peter Wilson said today: “With it’s aggressive cyber campaigns, we see the GRU trying to clean up Russia’s own mess.
“We are now stepping up our collective activity against malign operations, and specifically the GRU. We will shine a light on their activities.
“The GRU can only succeed in the shadows. When we see their activities, we must expose it to the light together.”
The US Department of Justice is set to publish charges against the four Russians this afternoon.
Senior government officials said the whole operation failed, and the team gleaned no information from any of the attempted hacks.
A British security official said: “Judging from their past form elsewhere, discrediting the investigation could well have been their intention.”
Nato allies said they "stood in solidarity with the decision to call our Russia on its blatent attempts to undermine international law and institutions".
And a statement from EU leaders including Donald Tusk "deplored such actions which undermine international law".
Today's news comes after Britain formally pointed the finger at Russia's GRU for 12 other cyber hacking operations in the last few years - from the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Democrats in America.
A report published today by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) laid bare the “indiscriminate and reckless cyber attacks” by the shadowy Russian spy agency that targeted political institutions, businesses, media and sport.
The report - compiled by the NCSC - found the GRU was behind the hacking of sensitive Hillary Clinton emails that helped Donald Trump win the 2016 presidency.
The spy agency said it the GRU was “almost certainly responsible”.
British spy chiefs accused Russia of a “flagrant violation of international law” with the attacks, which had cost national economies millions of pounds.
Russia has denied any involvement in the hacks - or the Salisbury poisoning. They called the accusations a "diabolical cocktail" of allegations.
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