US accuses Russian-owned forensics firm of spying on Europe

The US Department of Justice has accused Oxygen Forensics, a company formally registered in Virginia, of actually being secretly owned and run by Russian citizens. The firm develops digital forensics software that extracts and analyzes data from smartphones and computers, and it was used for years by law enforcement agencies across Europe.

How the company entered EU structures

Investigators found that at least two EU-funded projects on collecting, processing and exchanging electronic evidence in criminal investigations were connected to Oxygen Forensics software. The first, the EVIDENCE project, received more than €1.9 million (about 50 million korunas) from European funds between 2014 and 2016 to build a pan-European mechanism for exchanging digital evidence for courts. Oxygen Forensics was one of the invited consultants — that is how the company entered a wider network that included Europol, Eurojust (the EU's judicial cooperation agency) and OLAF, the European Anti-Fraud Office, specifically its digital forensics unit.

The second project, INSPECTr, was designed to help European police collect and analyze digital evidence obtained using different tools. Under it, software was developed that processed data extracted specifically by Oxygen Forensics products and made it easier for investigators to access that evidence.

Who was really behind the company

According to the US Justice Department, Oxygen Forensics software was developed and managed by Russians under the leadership of Oleg Sergeyevich Davydov — even though the company officially claimed the team was led by US citizen Lee Reiber. Reiber was detained in the United States, while Davydov was detained last Sunday at a London airport. According to investigators, the Russians behind Oxygen Forensics control its Russian “sister” company, MKO Systems, which sold the same technology to Russia's FSB security service and Interior Ministry.

The US Justice Department does not directly claim the software contained malicious code or gave the company unauthorized access to clients' systems and data. Nevertheless, investigators seized the firm's bank accounts, 57 domains and other cyber infrastructure that, they say, was used “to carry out these acts.” Oxygen Forensics products were widely used by law enforcement agencies across Europe — from Germany and Hungary to Italy, Spain, Romania and Lithuania — with some countries using them until quite recently.

Rights groups demand an investigation

Natalia Krapiva, a US lawyer with the digital rights non-profit Access Now, said the organization had warned for years about Russian ownership of Oxygen Forensics. “If Russian software developed for the FSB and Russia's Investigative Committee was indeed used to maintain the European Commission's evidence database for criminal cases, that raises serious concerns that confidential information was put at risk and became accessible to Russian authorities,” Krapiva said.

She called on the EU and any government using Oxygen Forensics software to immediately stop using it and to conduct a full investigation into how a Russian-controlled company managed to operate inside Western law enforcement structures for decades.

Source: novinky.cz