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The GRU, historically known as the Main Intelligence Directorate and formally the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, is Russia’s military intelligence service. Its cyber operations support Russian strategic and military objectives through intelligence collection, political interference, information operations, and disruptive or destructive attacks. It conducts both remote intrusions and close-access operations, including deployments of officers equipped to compromise wireless networks. Prominent cyber components include Unit 26165, the 85th Main Special Service Center associated with APT28, and Unit 74455, the Main Center for Special Technologies associated with Sandworm. Unit 54777, the 72nd Special Service Center, conducts psychological and information operations in coordination with GRU cyber units. These are components of the broader service rather than interchangeable aliases for the entire organization. GRU targets include government institutions, political organizations, international organizations, sports and anti-doping bodies, energy utilities, transportation infrastructure, and communications networks. Documented operations include the theft and release of Democratic Party information during the 2016 U.S. presidential election; intrusions against anti-doping organizations and the Swedish Sports Confederation; and attempted compromises of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Its hack-and-leak operations have used personas including Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks to disseminate stolen information and obscure state involvement. Its destructive operations include NotPetya, WhisperGate attacks against Ukrainian government systems, and the February 2022 disruption of Viasat’s KA-SAT network immediately before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. WhisperGate masqueraded as ransomware but was intended to destroy systems and data rather than obtain ransom payments. GRU operations have also targeted Ukrainian electricity infrastructure and conducted distributed denial-of-service attacks. Operational techniques include spear phishing, impersonation of trusted authorities, wireless-network compromise, network reconnaissance, data exfiltration, and adversary-in-the-middle attacks using fraudulent DNS responses. The service has controlled Cyclops Blink-infected devices and used compromised routers as proxies to conceal malicious traffic. Compromised TP-Link routers have also supported information theft.
Who, where, and from where this actor operates. Pulled from open-source reporting and Mallory's analyst review.
Sectors the actor has been observed targeting.
Geographies tied to known operations.
Attributed origin per open-source reporting.
49 distinct techniques observed across reporting, grouped by tactic. Hover any cell for the evidence excerpt.
13 malware families attributed to this actor across reporting.
8 additional families tracked in Mallory.
2 CVEs this actor has used in observed campaigns. 2 of them exploited in the wild.
23 indicators attributed to this actor. Values are masked here and available in full in Mallory.
20 sources tracked across advisories, community write-ups, and news. New activity surfaces here as Mallory finds it.