The United States placed five Russian companies and three individuals on its sanctions blacklist Monday for allegedly supporting the FSB intelligence agency’s hacking operations, including a firm involved in subsea operations.
The US Treasury named Digital Security and two subsidiaries as helping develop offensive cyber capabilities for Russian intelligence services, including the already-sanctioned FSB.
The Kvant Scientific Research Institute was also included on the blacklist, as a state enterprise supervised by the FSB.
In addition, Divetechnoservices and three officials of the firm were sanctioned for supplying and supporting the government’s underwater capabilities in monitoring and hacking subsea communications cables around the world.
US officials have become alarmed over the past year at the extent of US-targeted offensive cyber operations that Washington alleges have official backing from Moscow.
Those include the global NotPetya cyber attack, which paralyzed thousands of computers around the world last year; intrusions into the control systems of the US energy grid; and the insertion of trojans into home and company networking devices around the world, which allow both the diversion of data and attacks that could shut down networks.
The sanctions freeze property and assets under US jurisdiction and seek to lock those named out of global financial networks.

More from AFP
- European Police Arrest 42 After Cracking Covert App
- Dutch, European Hospitals ‘Hit by Pro-Russian Hackers’
- Cyberattacks Target Websites of German Airports, Admin
- Meta Slapped With 5.5 Million Euro Fine for EU Data Breach
- International Arrests Over ‘Criminal’ Crypto Exchange
- France Regulator Raps Apple Over App Store Ads
- More Political Storms for TikTok After US Government Ban
- Meta Hit With 390 Million Euro Fine Over EU Data Breaches
Latest News
- Software Supply Chain Security Firm Lineaje Raises $7 Million
- ICS Cybersecurity Firm Opscura Launches With $9.4 Million in Series A Funding
- Vulnerability Provided Access to Toyota Supplier Management Network
- Patch Released for Actively Exploited GoAnywhere MFT Zero-Day
- Linux Variant of Cl0p Ransomware Emerges
- VMware Says No Evidence of Zero-Day Exploitation in ESXiArgs Ransomware Attacks
- Comcast Wants a Slice of the Enterprise Cybersecurity Business
- Critical Baicells Device Vulnerability Can Expose Telecoms Networks to Snooping
