Targeted Attack: Norway Army Says Faced Cyber Attack After Libya Bombing

Via DefenseNews.com / AFP (May 19, 2011) -

The Norwegian military said May 19 that it had been the victim of a serious cyber attack at the end of March, a day after Norwegian F-16 fighter jets for the first time carried out bombings in Libya.

"The army is regularly the target of cyber and virus attacks, but not as extensive as this," Hilde Lindboe, a spokeswoman for Norwegian Defence Information Infrastructure (INI), told AFP.

On March 25, a day after Norwegian F-16s first took part in the NATO-led bombing in Libya, around 100 military employees, some of them high-ranking, received an email in Norwegian with an attachment that, once opened, let loose a virus made to extract information from the host computer.

"From what we have seen, no sensitive information has been obtained," Lindboe said.

According to INI, only one computer containing non-classified information was contaminated.

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) has opened an investigation to determine who launched the attack, but authorities say it is too soon to say whether there was a link to the Libya bombings.

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Sometimes it can be hard to determine if reports of targeted attacks are really targeted, but in this case...I think the fact that the e-mails were written in Norwegian and took aim at Norwegian army officials adds some serious creditable to calling it a “targeted attack”.

It would be interesting to know if the subject of the malicious e-mails or the malicious attachments directly referenced the new NATO campaign in Libya.

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