Jailed Russian hacker says the FSB coordinated his cyber-attacks on Hillary Clinton and the DNC

This summer, Konstantin Kozlovsky, a Yekaterinburg resident accused of working with the hacker group “Lurk,” reportedly declared in court that he acted “under the command of Russian Federal Security Service agents” when he participated in the hacking of the U.S. Democratic National Committee and stole Hillary Clinton’s emails. According to the newsletter The Bell, Kozlovsky made this announcement on August 15, at a hearing to extend his arrest.

(For an earlier report by The Bell translated into English, see this link.)

On December 2, the case record and an audio recording of Kozlovsky’s statement were published on his Facebook account. The Bell says that two sources have confirmed the authenticity of these records.

On August 14, a letter appeared on Kozlovsky’s Facebook page where he confesses to hacking the DNC on orders from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which he calls “Ilya.” The letter isn’t addressed to anyone, and it is dated November 1, 2016.

The Bell reports that FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchayev managed Kozlovsky using the pseudonym “Ilya.” Kozlovsky also names former Kaspersky Lab official Ruslan Stoyanov. Dokuchayev and Stoyanov have been in pretrial detention since December 2016 on treason charges. According to the independent TV network Dozhd, they are suspected of leaking intelligence about Russian hackers to the American government.

On December 5, The Bell reported that former FSB agent Sergey Mikhailov could be charged with treason for supplying intelligence about Russian hackers involved in the DNC cyber-attack to the United States.

Police detained members of the so-called “Lurk” hacker group in mid-2016 on charges of stealing roughly 3 billion rubles ($50.7 million) from banks and commercial organizations using the “Lurk” virus. Ruslan Stoyanov helped lead Kaspersky Lab’s investigation into the Lurk virus.