CRANBERRY TWP — A grand jury in the Western District of Pennsylvania indicted seven Russian agents Wednesday for cyber crimes against companies and organizations around the world. Among their reported targets was Westinghouse Electric Company.

“The defendants in this case allegedly targeted multiple Americans and American entities for hacking, from our national anti-doping agency to the Westinghouse Electric Company near Pittsburgh,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a news release.

Russian intelligence officers for Russian Main Intelligence Directorate, a military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, reportedly conducted the operations in an effort to steal, exploit and publish, often misleadingly, information about companies and organizations around the world, according to a Department of Justice news release.

The defendants are charged with computer hacking, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.

As early as Nov. 20, 2014, defendants performed reconnaissance of Westinghouse networks and personnel, creating a fake WEC domain and sending “spearphishing” emails to Westinghouse employee' work and personal email accounts, emails designed to harvest employee login credentials, gaining further access to the company's information, the release states.

Posing as a hacktivist group called the “Fancy Bears' Hack Team,” Russian officers used social media accounts, proxy servers and even on-site visits, when remote connections were not enough, to bypass security measures, all in an effort to steal employee credentials and company information for exploitation by Russian intelligence agencies, the indictment alleges.

The defendants include Aleksei Sergeyevich Morenets, 41, Evgenii Mikhaylovich Serebriakov, 37, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, 32, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, 30, and Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, 27, who were each assigned to Military Unit 26165, and Oleg Mikhaylovich Sotnikov, 46, and Alexey Valerevich Minin, 46, who were also GRU officers. All of whom are Russian nationals and residents, according to the release.