A year before federal prosecutors accused Mariia Butina of operating as a secret agent for the Russian government, she was a graduate student at American University working on a sensitive project involving cybersecurity.

Butina's college assignment called for her to gather information on the cyberdefenses of U.S. nonprofit organizations that champion media freedom and human rights, The Associated Press has learned. It was information that could help the groups plug important vulnerabilities, but also would be of interest to the Russian government.

John Sipher, who once ran the CIA's Russian operations, said Butina fits the profile of the kind of lightly trained asset frequently used to help identify espionage targets without attracting attention from counterintelligence, which is often focused on high-level contacts with government officials.

"The project is perfect, because a student can do that research legitimately," Sipher said. "You can just imagine why that would be of interest. It's a sort of gold mine."