Massive Cyber-attack Strikes Telenor, Major Telecommunications Company of Norway

According to local media, Telenor the telecommunications giant of Norway has been struck with an advanced cyber-attack; thus reported softpedia.com dated March 18, 2013.

It's perceived that cyber-criminals may've filched significant volume of information stored on computers that the executives of the major organization used.

Also, according to representatives of the company, experts have been prompt in identifying the breach following which they've taken extra precautions for stopping similar incidents in future. But, as there can be severe impact from the intrusion, Telenor has lodged a complaint with the cops.

Initially attackers dispatched crafty e-mails that hit the inboxes of the company's high-profile officials, while seemed as arriving from trustworthy sources such as internal employees of the organization.

There were attachments too inside the e-mails whose files carried advanced malicious software undetectable by security software.

When this malware comprising Trojans were taken down on the affected PCs, they began digging for passwords, e-mails, different kinds of files as well as personal information.

Actually, when the Norway-based Security Operations Center of Telenor detected abnormal Internet traffic sourced to many Telenor executives' PCs, the industrial spying became evident.

Meanwhile, according to Security Director Rune Dyrlie for Telenor Norge, it is amply lucid that the perpetrators of the assault actually managed to take down data. Newsinenglish.no published this dated March 17, 2013.

Dyrlie further states that it isn't possible for the company to conjecture about the culprits although the attackers' utilization of some fresh, tailored computer program indicates that they possessed plentiful resources along with sufficient skill. Securityledger.com published this dated March 18, 2013.

Dyrlie was queried as to what made even Telenor victimized with the kind of industrial spying given its appropriate expertise and resources, to which he emphasized that no time was delayed in discovering the assault and that Telenor successfully aborted further criminal operation.

Besides, in a similar industrial espionage assault in Norway, during 2011, customized Trojans targeted the power companies there, which were nearly identical in make and which targeted people believably influential for Telenor of late. Before that in 2011 itself, Norway's military personnel encountered an attempted online assault.

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» SPAMfighter News - 3/23/2013