The Vulkan files are a leaked set of emails, and other documents, implicating the Russian company NTC Vulkan () in acts of

cybercrime Cybercrime encompasses a wide range of criminal activities that are carried out using digital devices and/or Computer network, networks. It has been variously defined as "a crime committed on a computer network, especially the Internet"; Cyberc ...

, political interference in foreign affairs (such as in the

2016 United States presidential election United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 2016. The Republican Party (United States), Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor, Indiana governor Mike P ...

) through

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

, censorship of domestic social media, and

espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...

, in collusion with Russia's

Federal Security Service The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation �СБ, ФСБ России (FSB) is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterin ...

(FSB), their armed forces (GOU and

GRU Gru is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the ''Despicable Me'' film series. Gru or GRU may also refer to: Arts and entertainment * Gru (rapper), Serbian rapper * Gru, an antagonist in '' The Kine Saga'' Organizations Georgia (c ...

); and Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The files date from 2016 to 2021.

Background

The company NTC Vulkan was founded by Anton Markov and Alexander Irzhavsky in 2010. Both are graduates of St Petersburg military academy and have served in the Russian army, with Markov reaching the rank of captain and Irzhavsky reaching the rank of major. Vulkan received special licences to work on classified military and state projects from 2011. It has more than 120 staff, 60 of who are programmers, and describes its speciality as information security. It lists

Sberbank The Public JSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was ...

Aeroflot PJSC AeroflotRussian Airlines (, ), commonly known as Aeroflot ( or ; , , ), is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo Interna ...

and

Russian Railways Russian Railways or RZD () is a Russian fully state-owned vertically integrated railway company, both managing infrastructure and operating freight and passenger train services and has a near-monopoly on long-distance train travel in Russia. ...

as customers.

Leaks

The documents, numbering in their thousands, were leaked to the German newspaper ' within days of the 24 February 2022

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

by a

whistleblower Whistleblowing (also whistle-blowing or whistle blowing) is the activity of a person, often an employee, revealing information about activity within a private or public organization that is deemed illegal, immoral, illicit, unsafe, unethical or ...

who opposed that war, and were analysed by journalists from that publication and ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', ' and ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'', with several other media outlets, as part of a consortium led by Paper Trail Media and '. The consortium published the first details of its investigation on 30 March 2023. Five Western intelligence agencies and several independent cybersecurity experts authenticated the files.

Connections with other organisations

The documents link Vulkan to the

run hacker group Sandworm. Vulkan was contracted to write software called Scan-V to support searching for weak spots in systems to be targeted. Scan-V was commissioned in May 2018. The documents link Vulkan to the

Cozy Bear Cozy Bear is a Russian advanced persistent threat hacker group believed to be associated with intelligence agencies of Russia, Russian foreign intelligence by United States Intelligence Community, United States intelligence agencies and those o ...

hacker group, according to

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

researchers. Vulkan won an initial contract to create a system called Amezit in 2016. Amezit is designed to allow control of and interception of internet, wireless and mobile communications. In 2018 some employees went in connection to Amezit to

Rostov-on-Don Rostov-on-Don is a port city and the administrative centre of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies in the southeastern part of the East European Plain on the Don River, from the Sea of Azov, directly north of t ...

to visit the Radio Research Institute, which is linked to the

. It is not known if it has been used in parts of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Army.

References

External links

* {{Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections 2023 in international relations 21st-century military history of Russia Cybercrime Data journalism Investigative journalism Whistleblowing Propaganda in Russia Foreign relations of Russia Russian intelligence operations Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections Russian interference in British politics Russo-Ukrainian War Russia–NATO relations Federal Security Service GRU The Guardian Der Spiegel Süddeutsche Zeitung Vladimir Putin News leaks