Oschadbank used software controlled by Russian intelligence services for 5 years

Oschadbank, under the leadership of Andrey Pyshny, concluded 10 contracts for the supply of software maintenance services with a company with Russian roots, OS Consulting LLC, for a total amount of UAH 165 million during 2017–2021.

Oschadbank, under the leadership of Andrey Pyshny, concluded 10 contracts for the supply of software maintenance services with a company with Russian roots, OS Consulting LLC, for a total amount of UAH 165 million during 2017–2021.

This was reported by economic expert Sergei Lyamets.

He cited the ruling of the Kyiv Court of Appeal dated November 10, 2022 in case No. 761/20087/22. It follows from it that the SBU, together with the Office of the Prosecutor General, is carrying out a pre-trial investigation, which has established that the Russian commercial structures “Borlas group” and ZAO “RDTECH” (Moscow), cooperating with law enforcement agencies and the security bloc of the aggressor country. the purpose of organizing remote access to information, telecommunications and information-telecommunication networks and systems of government institutions, critical infrastructure facilities, the banking sector of Ukraine, etc., for the further collection of confidential information in the interests of the Russian Federation, as well as the shadowing of the national economy, on the territory of Ukraine were controlled storage systems are registered and used: OS Consulting LLC, RDTECH LLC, BSS Ukraine LLC, Sinset LLC (former name of LLC "BORLAS UKRAINE").

“According to the investigation, 2016-2020, based on the results of competitive bidding, managers of public funds: JSC State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine, JSC Oschadbank, National Bank of Ukraine, Ministry of Finance of Ukraine, Central Election Commission, State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine, the Service Center for units of the National Police of Ukraine and others, on the basis of concluded agreements, transferred funds in the amount of more than UAH 500 million to the enterprises LLC RDTECH, LLC OS Consulting, LLC BSS of Ukraine for technical support services and copies of software/hardware,” – notes Lyamets.

According to our information, Lyamts’ article caused a great resonance among those involved in the case with attempts to prove that it was all slander. However, they forgot to note that the source of “slander” is not the imagination of an expert, but a specific court decision.

The use of Russian software can have very serious consequences for information security. Thus, recently in an interview with ProIT, one of the most famous cybersecurity experts, director of cybersecurity at Google in 2019–2023, Nick Belogorsky, noted that while there is a war with Russia, it is absolutely important to avoid using any Russian software.

“Any popular software that is made in Russia is controlled. From Russia you can create what is called supply chain attacks. When they poison some kind of update for their own software and because of this they damage the computer, and then get into other systems. For example, it is possible to break into a bank not by attacking the banking systems, but by attacking the systems of the plumbers that the bank attracts if they have sufficient access to the system. This happens after a few steps through a chain of intermediaries,” he explained.

He emphasized that simply cutting off the connection, throwing out the hackers, changing all the passwords - this could take several days.

“It may take weeks to restore the system so that everything works. But to understand how bad everything is in terms of what they did with this data and how they used it is simply unknown,” Belogorsky emphasized.

“Instead of banning Telegram, it would be much more important to conduct an audit of which government agencies still use or have used software from the Russian Federation until recently. This is where the real danger may be hidden. How much information did the Russian intelligence services receive through software of Russian origin and how do they use it now? We'll all have to find out yet. Let me remind you of 1C and similar programs that provided accounting services for thousands of enterprises. They contained much more valuable information than Telegram posts,” notes Sergey Lyamets