14 DAY TRIAL // Russian officials have expressed willingness to intervene and catch the WADA hackers, but only under one condition, that WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) stop all investigations into Russian sports doping charges.
Eugene Gerden, SC Magazine reporter, cites Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin's head of press service, who said that Russia is aware that the WADA hackers could be located inside its borders.
"Further attacks on WADA and structures affiliated with it will probably end if Russia is offered guarantees that proceedings against its athletes and investigation of the entire Russian sport system by international regulators were to be dropped," Peskov told Gerdev.
Peskov also said that Russia might also provide WADA with technical support to deter future attacks.
Hackers leaked WADA files for the past two weeks
The WADA hackers, calling themselves Fancy Bears, hacked WADA in August, and started releasing WADA files in September. When the WADA hackers announced the leaks, they tried to pose as a subdivision of the Anonymous hacker collective but were mostly ignored.
All the published files are documents called Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUEs), which record which athletes received permissions from WADA and their sports federations to take illegal drugs to treat medical illnesses.
While all athletes around the world ask and receive TUEs, the coordinated Fancy Bears leaks and the careful wording used by the group made it look like these athletes were cheating, spurring a wave of inaccurate media reports.
High-profile athletes were included in the WADA TUE leaks, such as Rafael Nadal, Simone Biles, Chris Froome, Bradley Wiggins, and the Williams sisters.
Russia attempting to negotiate from a strong position
Analysis by ThreatConnect showed some evidence linking the WADA attacks to a cyber-espionage group called APT28, or Fancy Bear, a possible inspiration for the group's name.
Previous APT28 attacks have been carried out against adversaries of the Russian government, hinting at a possible, but yet unproven connection between APT28 and Russian state agencies.
Members of the SecureWorks Counter Threat Unit (CTU) research group told SC Magazine they also believe the WADA hackers are tied to APT28, and possibly to Russia's government.
"If you look at the speed at which the Russian embassy in London picked up the releases (on Wada revelations) and put their messages out, they were almost overlaid, like there was a planned media response to these (leaks)," said CTU researcher Tom Finney.
It's not a clear-cut conclusion that Russia hacked WADA
Previous analysis, this revelation from Finney, and the recent statement by Putin's head of press-service will most likely fuel rumors that the Russian government was indeed behind the WADA hacks, and is now trying to negotiate from a strong position and force WADA to back off in its investigations of Russian athletes.
While current evidence hints at a Russian state agency as being behind the attacks, this doesn't rule out nationalistic lone-wolf hackers.
Peskov's public statements also don't make any sense if the Russian government had been behind the attacks. In this case, it is more likely that the government would have attempted to negotiate with WADA in private, not via the press.