All of the indicted individuals worked for the Russian military intelligence agency, GRU. They were accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by stealing and releasing documents from the DNC and DCCC through Guccifer 2.0 and DNCLeaks.Antonov was assigned to GRU Unit 26165 where he was Department Head in charge of targeting military, political, governmental, and non-governmental organizations with spearphishing emails.

In 2016, Antonov supervised people who targeted the DCCC, DNC, and individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign using “spearphishing” to obtain passwords and gain access to the computers of their targets.

Spearphishing is an upgraded form of Phishing, it involves sending a spoof email but the email is geared toward a specific individual and appears to be from someone they know, often a superior, so the target will open the email. The message will seem important, if not vital, and ask the target to click something that secretly installs malware, or tells them to go to a specific url where they’ll be tricked into exposing their password.

Once the documents were obtained by Unit 26165, they were posted online and given to WikiLeaks by members of Unit 26165 using the personas Guccifer 2.0 and DNCLeaks.

The constitution of Russia doesn’t allow extradition, so it’s unlikely any of the hackers will be brought to justice.