Norway government ministries hit by cyberattack

TWELVE Norwegian government ministries have been hit by a cyberattack, the Norwegian government said on Monday (Jul 24), the latest attack to hit the public sector of Europe’s largest gas supplier and Nato’s northernmost member.

“We identified a weakness in the platform of one of our suppliers. That weakness has now been shut,” Erik Hope, head of the government agency in charge of providing services to ministries, told a news conference.

The attack was identified due to “unusual” traffic on the supplier’s platform, Hope said, declining to provide specifics. It was uncovered on Jul 12 and was being investigated by police.

“It is too early to say who is backing this and what is the extent of the impact (of the attack),” he said.

Norway is Europe’s largest gas supplier after a drop in Russian gas flows, and Western Europe’s largest oil exporter.

The prime minister’s office as well as the foreign, defence and justice ministries were not affected, because they use a different IT platform, said Hope.

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Norway’s state sector has been hit by cyberattacks previously, including in June 2022, when a so-called distributed denial-of-service attack took place, blamed on a “criminal pro-Russian group”.

Nato-member Norway shares a border with Russia in the Arctic and supports Ukraine with weapons, humanitarian aid and money.

The number of cyberattacks tripled between 2019 and 2021, the country’s cybersecurity agency said in its latest risk assessment report in February, with the number of serious incidents in 2022 at the same level as in 2021. REUTERS