Norway's military computers targeted in serious attack
Hack followed Libya bombing
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Norwegian military officials said they were targeted in a serious computer attack that struck in late March, one day after the country's F-16 fighter jets participated in bombings on Libya, according to published news reports.
On March 25, about 100 military employees received an email in Norwegian that included an attachment that installed a data-stealing trojan when opened, Agence France-Presse reported. The news service, citing the Norwegian Defense Information Infrastructure, said only one computer containing non-classified information was compromised. Among the recipients were high-ranking military personnel.
"The army is regularly the target of cyber and virus attacks, but not as extensive as this," AFP quoted INI spokeswoman Hilde Lindboe as saying.
Norway has six F-16s stationed in Crete as part of NATO's campaign against Moammar Gaddafi's forces. ®
COMMENTS
An email attachment that wasn't what it looked like?
Given that it's the Norwegians, I guess that makes it a Fjordulant email...
I'll get my coat.
Not that many of us
There is about 4.5 million people on this planet that speak Norwegian. I do not think I have ever seen a spam message, a scam or anything like that written in good Norwegian. So when you get a hundred e-mails sent in Norwegian to, and only to, specific individuals in the armed forces then it is a targeted attack at least. The seriousness of it can of course be debated, but I would be inclined to call it a serious attack if nothing else just to separate it from the run of the mill attack.
Norwegian too good
The Norwegians now believe that the attack was planned well ahead of the Libyan attack since the written Norwegian used is just too good. Very few people brought up outside the country can write grammatically correct Norwegian of more than a few sentences at at time.
Also since the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, there have been consistent cyber attacks on Norwegian government institutions, as well as a lot of snubbing of Norwegian interests by the Chinese government, who clearly threw their rattle out of the pram.
My money would be on the Chinese.
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