Norwegian Parliament suffered a cyber-attack on an internal email system, where the unknown hackers stole various information.
Norwegian Parliament suffered a cyber-attack on an internal email system, where the unknown hackers stole various information.
Stortinget director Marianne Andreassen reported that hackers breached email accounts for elected representatives and employees, and according to the analysis, varying quantities of data have been downloaded.
More than a week ago IT staff at the Parliament have detected irregularities and quickly adopted the essential measure in response to the attack.
According to the local press report, the Parliament’s IT staff has shut down its email service to prevent hackers from exfiltrating sensitive data.
After gaining access to the email inboxes, the hackers stole unspecified amounts of data from each of the hacked email accounts.
The Parliament is working with security authorities to investigate the attack. The investigators haven’t discovered what kind of data was exfiltrated by the attackers from the Storting email accounts. It is still unclear of the motive or cause of the attack; the investigators are still gathering a full picture of the attack.
“PST is aware of the IT attack on the Storting, ” reads the PST’s official tweet. “Once PST has received the report, we will assess whether there is a basis for starting an investigation.”
The Norwegian Labor Party’s communications manager Jarle Roheim Hakonsen confirmed to the Norwegian public broadcasting company NRK that both Labor party employees and politicians have been affected in the attack.
“NSM has contributed with incident response, analysis, and other measures during the cyber incident against the Norwegian parliament,' said NSM spokesman Trond Øvstedal, as first reported by CyberScoop.
In January 2018, a hacker group stole sensitive healthcare data belonging to more than half of Norway's population, according to the local press.
In May 2020, Norfund, Norway's state investment fund, got tricked by a group of internet scammers and suffered a business email compromise attack, where the hackers stole $10 million.
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