US charges six Russian military intelligence officers with cyberattacks

Six Russian military intelligence officers have been charged with carrying out cyberattacks on Ukraine's power grid, the 2017 French elections and the 2018 Winter Olympics, the US Justice Department announced on Monday.

The six current or former members of the GRU were also accused of staging a malware attack called "NotPetya" that infected computers of businesses worldwide causing nearly $1 billion in losses.

In addition, they allegedly targeted investigations into the nerve agent poisoning of Russian former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter and carried out cyberattacks on media outlets and the parliament in Georgia.

Assistant Attorney General John Demers said the six GRU officers were responsible for "the most disruptive and destructive series of computer attacks ever attributed to a single group."

Demers said members of the same GRU unit have been charged previously with seeking to disrupt the 2016 US elections but there were "no election interference allegations" in this indictment.