Russian company NTS Vulkan has been added to the list of companies and individuals under EU sanctions for their role, direct or indirect, in the invasion of Ukraine, according to Friday’s edition 23 June of the Official Journal of the European Union.
The firm is sanctioned for its links with the FSB (Russian internal security services): the European Union claims that Vulkan holds “a license issued by the FSB”, adding that this license is “issued to computer companies that develop encryption, data management or intelligence gathering technologies” for Russian state services. The document notes that the tools developed under this license can be used to collect “large amounts of data obtained for example by scraping social media”.
An extensive international survey
At the end of March, Le Monde, in collaboration with several international media including the Guardian and the Washington Post, revealed internal documents from this discreet Russian subcontractor, as part of a vast investigation coordinated by Paper Trail. Media. These files showed how this company had developed, on behalf of various Russian intelligence services, computer tools intended for cyberoffensive campaigns.
One of these projects, baptized Amezit, probably designed for the FSB, contained, for example, sophisticated software for creating and managing fake accounts on social networks, in order to carry out influence campaigns, mainly Russian-speaking but also targeting countries close to Russia. The investigations of Le Monde had in particular made it possible to link this tool to an attempt to destabilize elections in Armenia in 2017.
Another major Vulkan project revealed by the investigation by Le Monde and its partners is called Skan: it was a tool designed to collect a large amount of public information on digital infrastructures in order to prepare for potential cyberattacks. — tool possibly developed for Russian military intelligence (GRU).