As Europe prepares to vote, Microsoft warns of Fancy Bear attacks on democratic think tanks
Three months before parliamentary elections in Europe, Microsoft says it has detected hacking attempts on democracy-focused think tanks from the Russian hacking group that breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016. From September to December 2018, hackers conducted cyberattacks on employees of the Aspen Institutes in Europe, the German Council on Foreign Relations, and the German Marshall Fund, Microsoft said late Tuesday. Microsoft said it was “confident” the hacking group it calls Strontium, more commonly known as Fancy Bear or APT28, was responsible for many of the attacks. Western officials have attributed the group to Russia’s military intelligence directorate. The malicious cyber activity concentrated on 104 accounts of think tank employees based in Belgium, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, and Serbia. Two of the affected organizations contacted by CyberScoop indicated the hacking attempts were unsuccessful. Andrew Kolb, a German Marshall Fund spokesman, told CyberScoop that there was no evidence his organization’s systems were compromised. Tyson Barker, […]
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