Investigative reporters find that 305 Russian GRU officers outed themselves in car-registration paperwork

The investigative news websites The Insider and Bellingcat reported on Thursday that there are 305 cars registered at the Moscow address of a Russian military intelligence division blamed by Western governments for launching a series of hacker attacks over the past several years. The address, 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt, belongs to Military Unit Number 26165, and one of the cars is registered to Alexey Morinets, whom Western intelligence agencies say is one of the GRU officers responsible for carrying out successful and attempted hacker attacks against targets in the West.

According to The Insider and Bellingcat, all 305 people who registered their vehicles at 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt provided their passport information and mobile phone numbers, and some even listed the military unit as their place of work.

“In essence, this means that any person with access to the State Road Traffic Safety Authority’s database (and this is one of the most accessible databases in Russia) can get the names, passport information, and mobile phone numbers of several hundred GRU staff — and not just ordinary employees, but staff in the same military unit that’s been accused of the most scandalous hacker attacks in recent history,” said The Insider.