Russian military hackers behind the Storting attack – NRK Norway – Summary of news from different parts of the country

Today, the decision of the prosecution came in the investigation of the data breach at the Storting in August. PST closes the case because they believe that those responsible for the attack cannot be prosecuted.

– The investigation shows that the network operation by which the Storting was affected is part of a larger campaign nationally and internationally, which has been going on at least since 2019, writes police lawyer Anne Karoline Bakken Staff in PST .

Earlier this fall, on October 13, the government took the historic step of publicly accusing Russia of being behind the attack. The government at the time did not provide evidence or provide details on which player in Russia they believed was responsible.

Suspected of being involved in the US election campaign.

PST is now dating those they suspect of being behind the attack: the “Fancy Bear” hacking group. Another name for the group is APT 28. This is a notorious hacker group. According to US letter researcher Robert Mueller, “Fancy Bear” is a Russian military intelligence department (GRU). It arises from the report he delivered on electoral influence during the 2016 US presidential elections.

The group is said to have stolen emails and documents from the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign apparatus. They were later published to damage Clinton’s candidacy.

Over the years, there have been many allegations that GRU is behind similar daring and high-profile cyber operations, but only in a minority of cases has documentation been released to support the allegations.

German authorities spent a full five years investigating a data breach against their parliament. This led to a GRU officer being prosecuted and wanted internationally this spring. Germany believes it was the “Fancy Bear” group that was behind the attack.

Hacked emails

The attack on the Storting affected both employees and parliamentary representatives. The hackers managed to extract information from several email accounts, before the attack was discovered.

In the attack, emails, account numbers, social security numbers, banking information and other personal information were stolen from Storting employees and politicians.

– The investigation shows that the player has used a procedure called “brute force” of passwords to obtain valid usernames and passwords, says in the PST press release.

According to PST, this technique has been used against a large number of user accounts.

– In addition, the investigation has revealed that the actor has tried to delve further into the Storting’s computer systems. The information on which the analyzes are based indicates that the experiments have not been successful.