Swiss State Obstructs Cyberattack but Another Strikes Contractor
The Government of Switzerland says that the cyber-experts of state detected and then prevent one attempted cyberattack on Defense department of Swiss, whereas another attack has "disrupted" systems of one contractor for the department of foreign affairs.
As per a statement of federal chancellery, the ill-intentioned hackers have used the popular Turla malware in July attack against defense department servers. It did not provide any further details.
The government refused to disclose information about the origin of the attack or comment on any damage including data theft which might have happened because of security reasons. Government specialists took counter measures and an investigation is in the process while criminal charges have been framed with federal prosecutors against unidentified persons. The Turla spyware has been detected in the year 2014, and is believed to be infecting hundreds of computers of the government and military targets all over the Middle East and Europe. The departments of foreign affairs and defense both has filed legal complaint with the federal prosecutors, investigating the matter. Wbal.com posted on September 15th, 2017, stating that office of Attorney General Michael Lauber has confirmed the receipt of complaints, however they refused to comment any further.
The state-owned guardian and technology group Ruag fell victim to an attack with the Turla virus, resulting a loss of 20 gigabytes of data. Many IT systems of the federal administration have also been targeted by computer hackers during the last three years.
Many security researchers and Western intelligence officers say that they believe that the Russian government was responsible for those attacks by using the malware. In other news, the Treasury Department of US announced that it has forced sanctions on 11 entities and individuals to support Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) for cyber attacks on US.
The sanctions announced that hackers targeted, on Thursday, 1 entity engaging in supporting IRGC ballistic missile programme, 2 entities supporting designated airlines based in the Ukraine, and 2 networks based in the Iran, which are responsible for cyber-enabled attacks against financial system in US.
Jean-Marc Crevoisier, spokesman of foreign affairs department, in an email says that attack against contractor was not disclosed earlier for allowing the authorities to safeguard computer systems. He refused to comment further. » SPAMfighter News - 9/26/2017 |
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