The company NTC Vulkan was founded by Anton Markov and Alexander Irzhavsky in 2010.[1] Both are graduates of St Petersburg military academy and have served in the Russian army, with Markov reaching the rank of captain and Irzhavsky reaching the rank of major.[1]
Vulkan received special licences to work on classified military and state projects from 2011.[1]
It has more than 120 staff, 60 of who are programmers,[1] and describes its speciality as information security.[1] It lists Sberbank, Aeroflot and Russian Railways as customers.[1]
Five Western intelligence agencies and several independent cybersecurity experts authenticated the files.[1][7][3]
Connections with other organisations
The documents link Vulkan to the GRU run hacker group Sandworm.[1][3] Vulkan was contracted to write software called Scan-V to support searching for weak spots in systems to be targeted.[3][1] Scan-V was commissioned in May 2018.[1]
The documents link Vulkan to the Cozy Bear hacker group, according to Google researchers.[1][3]
Vulkan won an initial contract to create a system called Amezit in 2016.[1] Amezit is designed to allow control of and interception of internet, wireless and mobile communications.[1][8] In 2018 some employees went in connection to Amezit to Rostov-on-Don to visit the Radio Research Institute, which is linked to the Federal Security Service.[1] It is not known if it has been used in parts of Ukraine occupied by the Russian Army.[1]