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Russian hackers 'have spied on EU and Nato'(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Russian hackers suspected of ties to the Kremlin have spied on the Ukrainian government, European Union, Nato and others through a previously unknown bug in Microsoft Windows, researchers say. The cyber-threat intelligence firm iSight Partners said yesterday it had found a "zero-day vulnerability" - an unaddressed security breach - affecting almost all versions of the Windows operating system since the 2007 Vista. Microsoft said it would release an update to fix it. A group of hackers iSight called the Sandworm Team reportedly exploited this and other vulnerabilities from 2009 to steal diplomatic and intelligence documents, as well as data that could be used to penetrate further systems. The team targeted dozens of computers used by Nato, the Ukrainian and EU governments, French telecom firms, Polish energy firms and a US academic body, iSight said. The hackers also targeted some of those at GlobSec, a national security gathering in May attended by Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and the prime ministers of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Although iSight said it did not have direct evidence of the hackers' affiliation, several clues pointed to Moscow. ISight said the Sandworm Team's campaign was part of a "growing drumbeat of cyber-espionage activity out of Russia". But Andrei Soldatov, a journalist and expert on Russia's security services, said the available information was too sparse to definitively attribute the Sandworm campaign to the Russian government or conclude that Russian cyber-espionage was on the rise. He noted that few cyber-attacks had been seen in Ukraine this year, unlike in Estonia in 2007 or Georgia in 2008, when conflicts with Russia resulted in a rash of attacks that shut local servers. (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |