Cyberwarfare leaks show Russian army is adopting mindset of secret police

Documents leaked from Vulkan cybersecurity firm also raise questions about role of IT engineers behind information-control project

A consortium of media outlets have published a bombshell investigation about Russia’s cyber-capabilities, based on a rare leak of documents. The files come from NTC Vulkan, a cybersecurity firm in Moscow that doubles as a contractor to Russian military and intelligence agencies.

They reveal how, for years, a group of top Russian IT engineers have been hired to work with Russian military intelligence and a research facility of the FSB, Vladimir Putin’s domestic spy agency. This might seem an unusual mix, and would have been unimaginable before the end of the cold war.