Security News

NATO is facing persistent cyber threats and takes cyber security seriously. NATO cyber experts are actively addressing incidents affecting some unclassified NATO websites.

NATO is investigating claims by miscreants that they broke into the military alliance's unclassified information-sharing and collaboration IT environment, stole information belonging to 31 nations, and leaked 845 MB of compressed data. On July 23, SiegedSec, a crew that describes itself as "Gay furry hackers" and typically targets governments in politically motivated stunts, shared what was said to be stolen NATO documents via the gang's Telegram channel.

NATO has confirmed that its IT team is investigating claims about an alleged data-theft hack on the Communities of Interest (COI) Cooperation Portal by a hacking group known as SiegedSec. [...]

"Microsoft is investigating reports of a series of remote code execution vulnerabilities impacting Windows and Office products. Microsoft is aware of targeted attacks that attempt to exploit these vulnerabilities by using specially-crafted Microsoft Office documents," Redmond said today. "An attacker could create a specially crafted Microsoft Office document that enables them to perform remote code execution in the context of the victim. However, an attacker would have to convince the victim to open the malicious file."

A threat actor referred to as 'RomCom' has been targeting organizations supporting Ukraine and guests of the upcoming NATO Summit set to start tomorrow in Vilnius, Lithuania. BlackBerry's research and intelligence team recently discovered two malicious documents that impersonated the Ukranian World Congress organization and topics related to the NATO Summit to lure selected targets.

The threat actors behind the RomCom RAT have been suspected of phishing attacks targeting the upcoming NATO Summit in Vilnius as well as an identified organization supporting Ukraine abroad. The findings come from the BlackBerry Threat Research and Intelligence team, which found two malicious documents submitted from a Hungarian IP address on July 4, 2023. RomCom, also tracked under the names Tropical Scorpius, UNC2596, and Void Rabisu, was recently observed staging cyber attacks against politicians in Ukraine who are working closely with Western countries and a U.S.-based healthcare organization involved with aiding refugees fleeing the war-torn country.

The FBI has cut off a network of Kremlin-controlled computers used to spread the Snake malware which, according to the Feds, has been used by Russia's FSB to steal sensitive documents from NATO members for almost two decades. After identifying and stealing sensitive files on victims' devices, Turla exfiltrated them through a covert network of unwitting Snake-compromised computers in the US. In effect, Snake can infect Windows, Linux, and macOS systems, and use those network nodes to pass data stolen from victims along to the software nasty's Russian spymasters.

The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation has accused the United States and other NATO countries of launching over 5,000 cyberattacks against critical infrastructure in the country since the beginning of 2022. The agency says it has taken timely measures to prevent these attacks from causing any negative consequences to Russia.

Poland's Military Counterintelligence Service and its Computer Emergency Response Team have linked APT29 state-sponsored hackers, part of the Russian government's Foreign Intelligence Service, to widespread attacks targeting NATO and European Union countries. The attackers have targeted diplomatic personnel using spear phishing emails impersonating European countries' embassies with links to malicious websites or attachments designed to deploy malware via ISO, IMG, and ZIP files.

A new Proofpoint report indicates that in late 2022, threat actor TA473 targeted elected officials and staffers in the U.S., as well as experts in European politics and economics. TA473 is a threat actor, known since 2021, that has targeted several countries aligned against the interests of Belarus and Russia; the group is also known as Winter Vivern for some security companies and governmental entities.