The national Parliament of Norway, the Storting, was hit by a cyberattack, where the hackers extracted data exploiting the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities.
The national Parliament of Norway, the Storting, was hit by a cyberattack, where the hackers extracted data exploiting the Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities.
According to the statement issued, Storting has been hit by an IT attack linked to vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange that affected several businesses.
Microsoft released emergency out-of-band security updates on March 2nd that addresses four zero-day issues (CVE-2021-26855, CVE-2021-26857, CVE-2021-26858, and CVE-2021-27065) in all supported versions that are actively exploited in the wild.
Even though Storting received confirmation that data has been extorted, the attack's full extent is still unclear.
“We have implemented a series of comprehensive measures and are not ruling out further action. We are working closely with the relevant security authorities. The situation is currently unresolved, and we do not yet know the full potential of the damage, ” said Andreassen.
A cyberattack hit Storting in August 2020, where the hackers gained access to emails and data of a small number of parliamentary employees and representatives.
President Tone Wilhelmsen Troen said at a news conference that the latest attack was more severe than last year.
“This is an attack on our democracy; the severity is underscored by the fact that this is happening in the run-up to a parliamentary election and as parliament is handling a pandemic.”
Parliament said that there was no evidence at this stage that the two attacks were linked.
Organisations using Microsoft Exchange should ensure that they have applied the patches to their systems or using virtual technologies to minimise the risks of an attack.
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