The Norwegian government has reported that 12 ministries have fallen victim to cyberattacks.
The head of the government agency responsible for providing services to ministries, Eric Hope, said at a press conference today that the cyberattack was caused by a vulnerability in one of the government’s suppliers.
But the minister reassured the public that the weakness was quickly resolved. Hope also said that monitoring for anomalous traffic on the supplier’s platform allowed for attack detection.
Despite an ongoing police investigation since its revelation on July 12, the minister did not provide specific details of the incident. He stressed that it is too early to know who was responsible and the full impact of the attack.
“Given Norway’s geopolitical position, conclusive evidence of this type of attack is often difficult to obtain, but this bears all the hallmarks of a state-sponsored attack,” said Jamie Akhtar, CEO and co-founder of CyberSmart.
“Over the past 18 months, there has been an increase in the number of attacks directly targeting national infrastructure in countries that broadly support Ukraine.”
For more information on these attacks, see Swiss Security Report: Impact of Russia-Ukraine Conflict.
At the same time, Hope said some key departments within the government were unaffected, including the prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry, the defense ministry and the justice ministry. These ministries operate on different IT platforms that act as safeguards.
As Elliot Wilkes, chief technology officer at Advanced Cyber Defense Systems (ACDS) noted, Norway’s state sector has experienced cyber threats before.
In 2021, a Chinese-linked group targeted the email system of the Norwegian parliament. The following year, a pro-Russian hacker group known as Killnet launched a denial of service (DDoS) attack against a Norwegian public service website.
“Since this attack is believed to have been attributed to weaknesses in IT suppliers, this is another reminder of the urgent need to assess and mitigate security vulnerabilities at suppliers,” added Wilkes.
To learn more about software supply chain security, read our published analysis at: Information security James Coker, Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, April 27.
