ANI |
Update: Jul 20, 2021 6:23 AM STI

Oslo [Norway], July 20 (ANI): The Norwegian government on Monday officially attributed a breach of email accounts associated with the Norwegian parliament to Chinese hackers involved in exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Exchange server.
The Norwegian parliament said in March that messaging systems were breached in the Microsoft Exchange Server incident.
“This is a very serious incident affecting our most important democratic institution,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said in a statement. “After a detailed intelligence assessment, we believe the vulnerabilities have been exploited by actors operating from China.”
Soreide confirmed that the Storting was the victim of this exploitation and that the Chinese Embassy had been contacted in order to “raise the matter directly”.
The revelations come on the day the United States and its Western allies officially blamed China for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange mail server software and claimed that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations.
The minister stressed the attribution to China by the allied countries as part of the fight against the attack.
“We expect China to take this issue seriously and ensure that such incidents do not happen again,” Soreide said. “Allowing such malicious cyber activity to take place is at odds with the standards of responsible state behavior endorsed by all UN member states. “
The Microsoft Exchange Server Vulnerability Compromise was not the first hacking incident to hit the Norwegian government in the past year.
The Storting announced in September that it had been hit by a “computer attack” and that a small number of MPs and staff, with data from these accounts successfully uploaded by attackers. (ANI)