Oil and Gas Industry in Norway: Victim of Online Data-Theft

Several virus attacks on the PCs of the gas and oil industry of Norway with an intention to steal secret, sensitive data, particularly those associated with contract transactions has been revealed by security experts reports, upstreamonline on November 17, 2011.

Kjetil Berg Veire, Head of Information at National Security Authority (NSM) of Norway emphatically confirmed the news through an e-mail. It was reported that one PC was into the spying operation, with a particular aim of stealing commercial data from the gas and oil industry, as reported in the website of PCMAG on November 18, 2011.

As such, towards fulfilling this intention, the agency revealed claims of e-mails carrying viruses that were dispatched to employees of organizations conducting negotiations of prominent deals for stealing private information like usernames and passwords along with industrial diagrams and other essential documents from gas and oil industry of Norway.
The NSM cautioned the members of organizations that they should avoid viewing e-mail attachments that were received from unknown senders. Also in case of any suspicious activity, the recipients were to inform the organization's IT manager immediately.

However, the agency also acclaimed that online data theft is proving advantageous as it is cost-efficient, yields substantial results, and is often at low risk. Veire did not go through any kind of intricacy of this matter. He also did not reveal any information about the master minds behind this campaign, as published in AUSTRALIANIT on November 18, 2011.

The NSA also stated that there were slight variations in the said virus attacks as they were customized to evade anti-virus software detection. Consequently organizations, which were targeted, were ignorant about the attacks till the occurrence of the theft. It implied that perhaps their trade secrets had been captured as also dispatched offshore via Internet, the agency added.

Meanwhile, specialists on Internet security recapitulated how the website of the Nobel Institute at Norway was infected with an essentially effective Trojan virus during 2010, when Liu Xiaobo, a protestor and a democrat activist in China was declared the winner of Nobel Peace Prize for the year. Furthermore, the Institute also received virus-loaded attachments through e-mails during the same time.

» SPAMfighter News - 11/24/2011