Zeus Attack on British Government

The PCs of the British government, during late December 2010, were successfully contaminated with one Zeus sample a Trojan that steals information, William Hague the Foreign Secretary recently disclosed. EWeek published this on February 7, 2011.

Delivering a lecture at a security conference in Munich, Mr. Hague stated that during late December 2010, numerous people worldwide received a phishing electronic mail that posed as a message from US President's official residence the White House asking them to follow one web-link embedded on the e-mail, which, however, downloaded a Zeus sample.

The Foreign Secretary explained that during the attack aimed at the British government, numerous e-mails got around a few of the government's filters. While specialists managed to cleanse the infection, the said kind of sophisticated attacks were getting increasingly common, according to him. V3.co.uk published this on February 7, 2011.

To stress how extensive and voluminous, assaults against government computers were becoming, Hague additionally cited 2 other recent incidences.

According to one, attackers in it tried to steal data pertaining to United Kingdom's nuclear Trident project, whist according to the other, attackers in it dispatched a phishing message electronically to 3 Foreign Office personnel in January 2011 supposedly from an official, who was a British, though not in the FCO.

Said Hague, the phishing e-mail was actually from one national intelligence agency that was hostile to the government while it had a PC-code implanted within a given attachment, which could have struck government systems. Fortunately, the systems detected the code as also prevented it from spreading onto other staff computers, he recounted. V3.co.uk published this on February 7, 2011.

Meanwhile, owing to the above type of incidences, security specialists are cautioning that cyber-attackers are targeting government systems as well. Hence, the departments should spread awareness amongst their staff about the way to follow best security practices towards keeping the departments' credentials and websites secured.

Besides, specialists have as well emphasized for one increasingly structured dialogue between nation-states that's necessary for dealing with security threats as well as establishing standards regarding the way states must operate on cyberspace, while collectively agreeing with those standards.

Related article: Zeus Trojan Stole Huge Amount of Information

» SPAMfighter News - 2/17/2011