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HACKING

Norwegian newspaper hit by ‘serious’ cyberattack

Newspaper Dagbladet was closed for several hours on Thursday in what has been described as a “serious” infringement of its online security.

Published: 18 October 2019 12:20 CEST
Norwegian newspaper hit by 'serious' cyberattack
Unrelated file photo. Photo: AFP

Dagbladet’s website went offline for several hours after an offensive article about Prime Minister Erna Solberg was posted on its homepage.

Aller Media, which owns the newspaper, closed access to the site along with its other media: Se og Hør, Dinside, KK and SOL.

The company suspects a hacker attack and has reported an IP address to police, it stated in an article published by Dagbladet shortly after the site came back online.

The website was switched back on around 9:15pm after an outage of approximately three hours.

Several articles which were published on Thursday afternoon were changed to include offensive content, Dagbladet writes.

In one such article, a story about car break-in was changed to attribute offensive quotes about paedophilia to Solberg.

The incident was initially reported by Medier24.

“This is a serious incident,” Aller Media CEO Dag Sørsdahl said in Dagbladet’s subsequent article.

“We think we have identified the problem and have no reason to believe there is any more unwanted content on our sites,” Sørsdahl added.

The company is in contact with the Norwegian National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) over the incident.

“We suspect a hacker attack. Content not made by us was published on our editorial pages. So we decided to close a number of our sites for several hours,” Sørsdahl said.

The CEO added that the company was working to improve online security.

“We launched additional security measures this week. Not all of the security measures have been initiated and it remains to be seen whether that would have prevented what happened today,” he said.

READ ALSO: Norway targeted by Anonymous over whaling

HACKING

Norway accuses Russian hackers of parliament attack

Norway's domestic spy agency on Tuesday blamed a Russian hacker group linked to Moscow's military intelligence for a cyberattack on the Norwegian parliament earlier this year.

Published: 8 December 2020 16:51 CET
Norway accuses Russian hackers of parliament attack
Norway's parliament in 2013. Photo: Mike McBride/Flickr

The Norwegian intelligence agency (PST) said the likely perpetrators were the Fancy Bear collective — a group regularly accused of attacks including on the US election — but there was not enough evidence to pursue charges.

A “vast” cyberattack on August 24th gained access to the emails of some MPs and parliamentary employees, officials announced at the time, without speculating on the identity of the attackers.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide later accused Russia of being behind the attack, and PST investigators have now strengthened her claims.

“The investigation shows that the network operation which the Storting (Norwegian parliament) was subjected to was part of a broader national and international campaign that has been going on since at least 2019,” PST said in a statement.

“Analyses show that it is likely that the operation was led by a cyber actor … known as APT28 or Fancy Bear. This actor has ties to GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.”

Using a method known as a “brute force attack”, where multiple passwords and usernames are submitted with the hope of eventually getting the right combination, the hackers were able to download “sensitive” information, PST said.

“The investigation has however not yielded enough elements to bring charges,” it said in a statement.

Russia's embassy in Norway has yet to comment on the PST findings, but in October it lambasted Eriksen Søreide's accusation as “unacceptable”.

“We consider this a serious and wilful provocation, destructive for bilateral relations,” the embassy said on its Facebook page at the time.

While relations are generally good between NATO member Norway and Russia, who share a border in the Far North, several espionage cases on both sides have soured relations in recent years.

Norway's intelligence agency regularly singles out Russia as one of the country's main espionage threats alongside Iran and China.

READ ALSO: Norway accuses Russia over cyber attack on parliament

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