The Treasury Department placed sanctions on them, and the State Department offered $5 million for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the group’s leader. In the Treasury Department sanctions announcement, the United States contended that some of the group’s leaders have done work for the F.S.B., the successor to the Soviet K.G.B. Instead, the code looked for a sign that the computer was part of a major corporate or government network. For example, many firms have their employees use a “virtual private network,” or V.P.N., a protected channel that allows workers sitting in their basements or attics to tunnel into their corporate computer systems as if they were at the office. Once the machine is reconnected to the corporate network, the code is deployed, in hopes of gaining access to corporate systems.

Source: New York Times June 25, 2020 23:15 UTC