MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has exposed a large-scale scheme involving the installation of spyware onto the phones of high-ranking officials by foreign intelligence services, the FSB said.
"Using the technical capabilities of major international IT corporations through the use of mobile communication devices, agents of foreign special services carried out a covert mission to wiretap devices targeted in the cyberattack," the FSB reported.
The installation of spyware onto the phones of high-ranking Russian officials became one of the largest operations by foreign special services, an FSB operative said in a video comment.
"Evidently, Western special services resolved that it would be cheaper and simpler for them to hack cellular phones than recruit costly informants with access to state secrets," the FSB officer said. According to him, foreign spy services were planning to collect data regarding contacts, plans and sentiments in society directly, without resorting to any non-profit organizations as mediators.
"We can already say that this was a multi-layered scheme fraught with far-reaching consequences and major risks that would involve coordination from various countries," he stressed.
Officials wiretapped by foreign special services were later blacklisted in the United States and the European Union, the operative added.
A criminal probe is underway, with the perpetrators, channels of infrastructure, affected officials and the volume of compromised data currently being identified, the FSB concluded.