The Minister of Justice believes that the hacker attack on Norwegian companies is unacceptable. She says we live with a different threat picture after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Updated less than 50 minutes ago
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Minister of Justice and Emergency Management Emilie Enger Mehl (Sp), police director Benedicte Bjørnland and director of Sofie Nystrøm in the National Security Authority (NSM) will meet the press on Wednesday night.
– Everything indicates that the attack comes from a Russian criminal environment, says Minister of Justice Emilie Enger Mehl (Sp) during a press conference Wednesday night.
She is aiming for a hacker attack which, among other things, means that BankID and the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority’s website are down.
– Completely unacceptable
BankID’s website only states “The service is unavailable”, ie that the services are not available. There is also instability in Altinn. NAV is also exposed to the cyber attack.
– Such an attack on Norwegian interests is of course completely unacceptable.
The head of NSM, Sofie Nystrøm, has described the attack as “a low-scale crisis”.
– They have partly succeeded in bringing down a number of important services in shorter periods, Nystrøm says to VG.
A picture of Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt (Labor Party) has also been misused and manipulated by the hackers, and published on the communication platform Telegram.
Another threat picture
Mehl points out that there have been several cyber attacks in recent times, and that there has been a changed digital risk picture.
– In the time after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we have found ourselves in a different threat picture, and a different security policy situation in the world around us.
She also points out that the government has allocated NOK 200 million to strengthen national digital security through the National Security Authority.
– The security authorities report today that they are able to handle the attack we see. It is important that we can handle such attacks in order to give security back to people.
Points to criminal environments
– Do you know if the hacker group has any connection to the Russian authorities?
– It is far too early to speculate in that type of thing. What is known is that there is a group, probably a criminal environment, who have themselves gone out and pointed out this attack. But those are questions we will return to later.
Mehl will not answer whether the Norwegian authorities have contacted the Russian authorities after the attack.
– Today, NSM has handled this attack, and it is too early to conclude who is behind it.
Embassy: – No connection to Russian authorities
The Russian embassy has commented on the attack on its Facebook page:
“We consider it inappropriate to comment on the actions of unidentified persons, who have no connection with the Russian authorities.”
At the same time, the embassy points out that Russia has a national data center for cyber incidents, which is authorized to have international contact about data incidents.
The embassy claims that the Norwegian authorities have previously been sent a formal procedure for contacting the center, but that the Norwegian authorities have “refused to contact them”.
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