Norway’s parliament comes under ‘significant’ cyberattack, emails of several MPs hacked

The Norwegian parliament has come under a persistent cyberattack over the past few days, the assembly revealed. The email accounts of several MPs have been breached by the hackers and “various quantities” of data downloaded.

The security breach, described as a “significant attack,” was revealed by the country’s legislature on Tuesday. While the extent of damage was not immediately clear, the assembly admitted that emails of a “limited number” of MPs as well as of several staffers had been compromised.

“Our analysis shows that various quantities of data were downloaded,” the parliament said, without giving any detail on the nature of the compromised data and its sensitivity.

The country’s counterintelligence agency, the National Security Authority (NSA), has assisted the legislature in countering the attack and assessing the damage it inflicted.

“We have been involved for a few days,” NSA spokesman Trond Oevstedal said. “We are assisting parliament with analysis and technical assistance.”

As of now, Norwegian authorities have not made any assertions about who might have been behind the new attack.

Over the past few years, Norway’s government institutions reported a number of large-scale hacking attempts. Early in 2017, the country’s defense and foreign ministries, the legislature and even the Police Security Agency (PST) came under a major attack, quickly blaming it on ‘Russia-linked’ hackers. No solid proof to support the bold accusations against Moscow has been produced by Oslo.

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