A Cypriot company attempted to sell speed cameras with hidden Russian SIM cards to the Slovak government, falsely claiming that the cameras had been manufactured in Cyprus, according to reports on Tuesday.
Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung reported that the company, named as Sodasus Ltd, had offered to sell a total of 279 such speed cameras to Slovakia, telling the Slovak government that it had manufactured the cameras itself.
However, it was later discovered that the cameras were in fact manufactured by St Petersburg-based technology company Simicon, and had “numerous vulnerabilities” which were uncovered during an investigation conducted by Slovakia’s national security bureau.
Among the issues found was a hidden slot for a second SIM card, and that the devices can “receive commands via SMS from 12 telephone numbers registered in St Petersburg and Russia’s Kemerovo oblast”, which is located in Siberia.
Once these findings came to light, the testing of the new cameras was immediately halted.
Sodasus Ltd claims to be located on Nicosia’s Strovolos Avenue, a stone’s throw from the presidential palace, and has been a registered company since 2021, though little evidence of any history of business activities on the island could be found.
It is as yet unclear whether the cameras were imported to Cyprus and then presented as Cypriot goods when exported to Slovakia.
The reports come after it was widely reported that a “large-scale Russian operation” has been undertaken to gain access to traffic cameras along military logistics routes in Europe so as to identify which types of weaponry and other hardware are being sent to Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian newspaper Pravda, the Dutch authorities found last month that “a small number of cameras located directly on military logistics routes in the Netherlands had been compromised”.
Last year, British newspaper the Guardian reported that the United Kingdom’s intelligence services had found that Russia had attempted to hack into border security cameras “to spy on and disrupt the flow of western aid entering Ukraine”.
It quoted an advisory issued by the UK’s national cyber security centre calling on private companies involved in the delivery of aid to “take immediate action to protect themselves”.
“In addition to targeting logistics entities, [Russian] actors likely used access to private cameras at key locations, such as near border crossings, military installations, and rail stations, to track the movement of materials into Ukraine. The actors also used legitimate municipal services, such as traffic cams,” the advisory said.
Last year, President Nikos Christodoulides had said that the EU must “confront” countries which attempt to help Russia evade sanctions placed on it as a result of its invasion of Ukraine.
He said that the imposition of sanctions is “a powerful tool for the EU”, and that “we should ensure that it is fully effective, confronting all these countries which attempt to violate sanctions”.
