The botnet was being assembled by Russia's foreign intelligence agency, the GRU, Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference.

Ukraine's CERT attributed the phishing effort to a Russian state-backed group known as Armageddon or Gamaredon.

U.S. Cyber Command General Paul Nakasone told senators that scaling back his organization's cyber ops authorities would be damaging to its mission.

Narcotics trafficking and money laundering were the main business for Hydra, which researchers say was the largest dark-web market.

Ransomware strains such as Maze, Ryuk and BlackCat have increasingly been part of FIN7's playbook in recent years, Mandiant says.

Cybersecurity and homeland security experts are split on the wisdom of scaling back broad authorities that DOD has to launch cyber-operations.

The announcement comes after years of back-and-forth between Congress and multiple presidential administrations about consolidating how the department handles cyber diplomacy.

Even after the arrests, the group has released more stolen data.

Web applications created in the Spring platform could leave users open to remote code execution, CISA and others are warning.