Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation

Service tasks

SVR carries out intelligence activities in order to:

• providing the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly and the Government with the intelligence information they need to make decisions in the political, economic, military-strategic, scientific, technical and environmental fields;

• ensuring conditions conducive to the successful implementation of the Russian Federation's security policy;

• promoting economic development, scientific and technical progress of the country and military and technical security of the Russian Federation.

Service Botnet

In January-February 2012, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service held three closed tenders for the development of methods for monitoring the blogosphere and throwing information messages to form public opinion abroad, the Kommersant newspaper reported. Tenders totaling over 30 million rubles were won by Iteranet, whose general director is Igor Matskevich.

By 2013, the contractor will have to develop three systems:

1. "Dispute" (order amount - 4.41 million rubles), which will monitor the blogosphere and analyze factors affecting the popularity and dissemination of information.
2. "Monitor-3" (4.99 million rubles) to study methods of covert control on the Internet.
3. Storm-12 (22.8 million rubles). The system is responsible directly for stuffing the necessary information and its further dissemination in order to manipulate public opinion.

Disput and Monitor-3 systems will begin operation in 2012.

According to Kommersant's sources, it is quite possible that the developments will be used not only to manipulate public opinion outside Russia, but also on the Runet. Pilots of monitoring systems will be deployed in the countries of Eastern Europe, which were part of the Soviet Union.

"The text of the tender for the Storm-12 system says in plain text that the special services want to spend millions of rubles on creating a stuffing system through accounts registered in social networks in advance. The main obstacle to the operation of the system is the means of protecting social networks from spam. Part of the money will be spent on neutralizing these protections, "Anton Nosik commented to Kommersant

Read more about botnets in the article "Bots."

Chronicle

2024: Egyptian President al-Sisi receives Russian SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi received on April 17, 2024, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin.

The meeting discussed the international situation in the region, issues of combating terrorism and the development of events in Ukraine and Afghanistan, said Egyptian presidential spokesman Ahmad Fahmi.

2021: Opening a virtual reception room on the darknet

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) opened a virtual reception room on the darknet, becoming the first intelligence service in Europe to complain on the shadow Internet. This became known on April 20, 2021.

An English-language message with instructions on using this feedback channel appeared on the SVR website at the end of December 2020^[1]but it^[2] not been officially reported.

The publication "Present Time" (recognized in Russia as a foreign agent) was the first to draw attention to the appearance of this service, through which everyone is invited to send important information to the department. The instructions say that people who are outside Russia and have important information about threats to its security can send data to the SVR "in a safe and anonymous way" through the Tor network or using Tails OS. Next, a link to a site in the.onion domain zone is published, which is not available through regular browsers.

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service has opened a virtual reception room on the darknet

After registering, the user will receive a code of five English words, allowing you to decrypt the service response, if any. Whistleblowers are also advised to encrypt their appeal to SVP using PGP, since owners of Tor nodes through which their traffic passes can theoretically de-anonymize them.

The former employee U.S. National Security Agencies Edward Snowden called the PGP system unsafe.

According to cybersecurity specialist, founder of Vee SecurityAlexander Litreev, visitors to the SVR reception can be de-anonymized, since the default service does not offer to use PGP.

If you are in a hostile environment and fear for your safety, then do not use smartphones, computers and other electronic devices associated with you or your acquaintances to access the network and maintain communication with us, "warns SVR.

The amount of files that can be sent to SVP should not exceed 15 MB, but the text can be of any length. So, the journalists managed to send the scouts the novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy.^[3]

1985: Escape of KGB Colonel Gordievsky in the trunk of British diplomats

In the 1970s and 80s, Colonel Oleg Gordievsky oversaw Britain and Scandinavia in the First Main Directorate of the KGB, and from 1974 to 1985 he collaborated with MI-6 under the pseudonym OVATION.

In March 1985, a high-ranking CIA officer Aldrich Ames was recruited to the KGB in the United States, who handed over to Soviet intelligence a list of CIA agents known to him in the USSR, as well as indirect information about MI-6 agents in the USSR, where Gordievsky was also listed.

Gordievsky was interrogated, but he did not confess. Realizing that his complete exposure as an agent was only a matter of time, he decided to flee the USSR.

On July 20, 1985, Gordievsky arrived from Moscow to Leningrad, then reached the border area with Finland, where he was picked up by British diplomats and taken through Soviet border checkpoints in the trunk of a diplomatic car.

Abroad, he continued to work for the British intelligence services as a freelance expert.

Gordievsky gave the British dozens of Soviet intelligence officers, as well as a significant amount of classified information.

However, in general, the damage caused by Gordievsky can hardly be estimated even now: he revealed not only specific officers, but also the methods of the KGB working abroad, which allowed the British services to more effectively counter Soviet and later Russian intelligence.

He died in March 2025 at the 87th year of his life in Britain.

Notes