Finland's government offices hacked, documents taken

HELSINKI, FINLAND: Finland's government authorities said they had been attacked by hackers working for one or several foreign nations who stole a "remarkable" number of files over a period of several years.

3 Jul 2014

Foreign Ministry official Peter Stenlund says Finland has been the target of a huge spying racket for a number of years. Image: Foreign Ministry

The Nordic country revealed in October that it had been the target of "massive" digital spying without mentioning the origin of the espionage efforts.

At a press conference held in Helsinki this week, Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) Director Antti Pelttari accused "governmental agents" of being behind these attacks, which in some cases, he said, were very sophisticated.

Pelttari refused to mention any specific countries, and did not disclose the content of the compromised files.

"The hackers could have accessed information which might have influenced several negotiations of the government," said Foreign Ministry official Peter Stenlund, adding that it obviously harms Finland's national interests.

"However, the hackers did not access any files from European institutions or classified documents, which are stored in other computer systems which were not hacked," the Foreign Ministry said.

Supo said an unidentified friendly country had warned Finland in the beginning of 2013 of a possible threat. The hackers managed to install surveillance programmes on the Foreign Ministry computers which were sending files abroad.

Supo said that the investigation of the spying case was completed for the most part and that reinforced security measures had been installed to block other attacks.

"According to our information, several diplomatic networks in Western Europe have been targeted by this type of spying for many years," Stenlund said.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge

Source: I-Net Bridge

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