Inside the Russian tech world that bred hacking gang Clop and how to minimise your risks

Unmasking the hackers

You might typically imagine hackers to be teenagers sitting at laptops in their bedrooms, coming up with code in the early hours of the morning, with their identities hidden by bizarre online aliases. In fact, says Shapiro, many do their work together in traditional offices and plenty of the key Russian figures allied to the Kremlin have been outed. 

“Not only do we know the names of the people in these units, but we can see their Facebook pages and find their social media presences. These are not just shadows, they’re real people.” 

Shapiro can even share Fancy Bear’s office address: 20 Komsomolsky Prospekt, a complex of beautiful 19th century buildings, less than two miles from the Kremlin, which houses the Khamovnichesky military barracks.  

“They go to work there every day,” he says. “If you look at the cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee in 2016, you can see they happened during the Russian business day.” 

He details in his book how the head of Fancy Bear’s hacking unit, Viktor Netyksho, assisted in drawing up the IT curriculum for Moscow high schools and has an agreement to recruit future hackers from these institutions. Netyksho’s photo was published last month after the Ukrainian hacking group Kiber Sprotyv, or Cyber Resistance, gained access to his wife’s email account.