Norwegian Parliament discloses cyber-attack on internal email system

The Norwegian Parliament (Stortinget) said on Tuesday that it fell victim to a cyber-attack that targeted its internal email system.

In a press release today, Stortinget director Marianne Andreassen said that hackers breached email accounts for elected representatives and employees alike, from where they stole various amounts of information.

Andreassen said the incident is currently under investigation, and, as a result, couldn’t provide any insight into who was behind the attack, or the number of hacked accounts.

Norway’s intelligence agency is currently investigating the incident, according to a statement the agency posted on its Twitter account earlier today.

While the investigation is still ongoing, Andreassen said that Stortinget has already started notifying impacted representatives and employees about the incident.

Local press, who first broke the story about the attacks, also reported that the parliament’s IT staff has shut down its email service to prevent the hackers from siphoning more data.

Prior to today’s incident, cyber-attacks targeting Norway have been rare and far apart.

In January 2018, a hacker group stole healthcare data for more than half of Norway’s population, according to local press.

In February 2019, cyber-security firms Rapid7 and Recorded Future revealed that Chinese hackers breached Visma, a Norwegian company that provides cloud-based business software solutions for European companies, and used this access to attack the company’s customers.

In May 2020, a group of internet scammers tricked Norfund, Norway’s state investment fund, out of $10 million, in an attack known as a business email compromise.