Chinese government-backed hackershave been linked to the hack of the Finnish Parliament, which took place last year and led to the compromise of several email accounts.
See more: Email accounts of members of the Finnish Parliament were hacked
“Some parliamentary email accounts may have been compromised in this attack. Among these accounts are emails belonging to members of parliament,” Parliament officials said at the time.
The attack was detected by the Finnish Parliament's security team and is still being investigated by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the authorities (Central Criminal Police, Security Police).
According to a statement yesterday, authorities uncovered a spying operation targeting the Finnish Parliament last year. The attackers attempted to gain access to the parliament's information systems. Now, experts say the Chinese state-run hacking group APT31 is likely behind the attack.
The Central Criminal Police said it would not release much information yet because the investigation is ongoing.
“When criminal offences are related to espionage, computer destruction and message interception, everyone understands how serious the situation we are facing is,” the Parliament said.
APT31 espionage campaigns
The state-sponsored hacking group APT31, also known as Zirconium and Judgment Panda, is a group backed by the Chinese government. These Chinese hackers have been linked to numerous information theft and espionage operations.
Also, according to BleepingComputer, the APT group has been linked to the theft and misuse of the NSA's EpMe exploit, years before its leak by the Shadow Brokers in 2017.
Additionally, Microsoft last year detected APT31 attacks against leaders and high-profile individuals associated with Joe Biden's election campaign.
But Google had also detected phishing emails sent by Chinese hackers to people working for the campaign.
The Parliaments of Germany and Norway were also hacked .
In August 2020, Norway revealed a similar hack that resulted in the compromise of email accountsbelonging to both MPs and parliamentary staff.
See more: Hackers "hit" the Norwegian Parliament and stole data!
In October, Norway's Foreign Minister, Ine Eriksen Søreide , revealed that Russian state hackers (likely the APT28 group) were behind the attack , who stole data from the compromised emails.
See more: Stortinget: Russian “APT28” behind Norwegian Parliament hack
In the same month, the Council of the European Union announced sanctions against several members of APT28 for their involvement in the attack on the German federal parliament (Deutscher Bundestag) in 2015.
Source: Bleeping Computer
