September 02, 2020

Anna Murray 

Norway's parliament in Oslo announced September 1st that a vast cyber-attack from enabled hackers to exfiltrate information from the email accounts of several parliamentarians. The Norwegian parliament's administrative director, Marianne Andreassen, stated the hackers' identities were not immediately known. But, the email accounts of a few MPs and employees were found to have been downloaded quantities of data.

The breach echoes of other attacks that targeted elected officials in various countries, such as the German Bundestag suffered a cyber-attack in 2015 with the loss of more than 16 gigabytes of data, and more than 90 members of the British parliament had their email accounts intruded in 2017. Besides, a breach of the computer network of the Australian parliament in 2019 led to the theft of data from several officials.

The national security authority (NSM) has worked with parliament officials to assess the situation and put measures in place to prevent any future attack. The Norwegian police security service (PST) also stated that a police report has been filed, while the investigation is ongoing.

Photo:Webshot.