MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) claims Russia could be behind a cyberattack on emails of individual members of the PST, as well as on those of several members of the Norwegian Labour Party, a PST spokesperson said.
"Earlier this year the PST found out from a foreign partner about a specified attack on nine email accounts. Beside the Labor party’s parliamentary group, the email accounts belong to certain people in the foreign and defense ministries, Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority, one university and the PST itself," PST spokesman Martin Bernsen told the VG newspaper on Friday.
Bernsen added that the police could not yet state whether or not the attack caused damage to the interests of Norway, as the investigation of the incident was not over yet. However, the spokesman stressed that there were no reasons to believe that the attackers had obtained any secret information.
This is not the first case of foreign officials accusing Russia of hacks.
Earlier in the week, media reports emerged saying that a group of unknown hackers had cracked the emails of the Czech foreign minister and his deputies and had stolen thousands of user accounts, as well as classified data.
Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek was fast to allege that the attack was orchestrated straight from Moscow. However, Czech Defense Minister Martin Stropnicky soon after refuted those claims.
"According to my information, it is very difficult to reveal that. Maybe the minister [Zaoralek] knows more but experts say it would be very difficult to reveal that quickly," Stropnicky said.
Russia has repeatedly denied the US allegations calling them absurd and characterizing them as an attempt to divert public opinion from revelations of corruption as well as other pressing domestic issues.
In January, EU Commissioner for the Security Union Julian King said that France, Germany and the Netherlands may have been subjected to hacking attacks in the light of the upcoming elections, due to be held this year.
