Gifts to Delegates of Russian G20 Summit Contained Data-Stealing Malware

Tripwire.com reported on 29th October, 2013 that two Italian newspapers La Stampa and Corriere della Sera published unconfirmed reports stating that Commemorative gifts circulated by the government of Russia to celebrate G20 Summit in St. Petersburg last month (September 2013) were tainted with data embezzling malware.

The gifts, which consisted of pen drives or (USB drives) and chargers of mobiles were inscribed with the logo of G20 Summit, were gifted to global leaders at the G20 Summit.

European Union (EU), Council President, Herman Van Rompuy gave his gift to German security researchers for investigation and it was later determined that the units comprised malware designed to withdraw sensitive information from mobile phones and PCs if Internauts plugged them into their devices.

EU authorities are carrying out an investigation to find out if the participants were being besieged in a tried espionage campaign and have tipped off other participating nations in the Summit of the possible hazard to their security.

The latest claims of international espionage come on the heels of allegations that the National Security Agency of United States spied on friendly European powers like Germany, France, Spain and Italy by secretly monitoring tens of millions of telephone calls.

The alleged attempts by Moscow to access secret information from foreign powers at the G20 came at a time when the US and Russia are on high tension particularly over Syria and the Russian grant of asylum to Edward Snowden, former analyst of NSA systems.

Dailystar.com.lb published news on 30th October, 2013 quoting Dmitry Peskov, Spokesman of Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying "I did not know the source of latest allegation. This is undoubtedly nothing but an attempt to shift the focus from issues that truly exist in relations between European capitals and Washington to unconfirmed and non-existent issues".

Moreover, these attacks also come close to last week of October 2013 when Israeli media informed of a tried cyberattack on 140 senior figures of the country's leading security and defense industries, who got emails maligned with malware programmed to embezzle and duplicate information. The report said that the e-mails seemed to initiate from a German firm known in the field but were traced back to defense industries of China.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/8/2013