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HACKING

Pirate Bay co-founder jailed for two years

Pirate Bay founder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for data breaches, aggravated fraud, and attempted aggravated fraud, in what was Sweden's biggest ever hacking trial.

Published: 20 June 2013 11:26 CEST
Pirate Bay co-founder jailed for two years

Svartholm Warg was convicted by the Nacka District Court after a hacking attack against Swedish IT firm Logica through which he gained unauthorized access to the personal data of thousands of people, which he then published on the net.

The conviction was also for hacking into the mainframe of Nordea, Scandinavia’s biggest bank. The Swede maintained his innocence throughout the trial, claiming that someone else had used his computer remotely.

The data breach at Logica, which supplies public agencies in Sweden with personal data from the country’s population registry, was discovered over a year ago, and the 28-year-old Svartholm Warg was believed to have stolen the information of 20,000 police employees, as well as millions of personal identity numbers (personnummer).

The Pirate Bay founder and an accomplice was also suspected of having copied a registry with nearly 11,000 names of people with protected identities and posting the data online.

Svartholm Warg’s accomplice, a 36-year-old man living in Dalarna, central Sweden, was also convicted for data breaches, and must also seek psychiatric care and drug rehabilitation, the court ruled.

TT/The Local/og

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HACKING

Norway accuses Russian hackers of parliament attack

Norway's domestic spy agency on Tuesday blamed a Russian hacker group linked to Moscow's military intelligence for a cyberattack on the Norwegian parliament earlier this year.

Published: 8 December 2020 16:51 CET
Norway accuses Russian hackers of parliament attack
Norway's parliament in 2013. Photo: Mike McBride/Flickr

The Norwegian intelligence agency (PST) said the likely perpetrators were the Fancy Bear collective — a group regularly accused of attacks including on the US election — but there was not enough evidence to pursue charges.

A “vast” cyberattack on August 24th gained access to the emails of some MPs and parliamentary employees, officials announced at the time, without speculating on the identity of the attackers.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide later accused Russia of being behind the attack, and PST investigators have now strengthened her claims.

“The investigation shows that the network operation which the Storting (Norwegian parliament) was subjected to was part of a broader national and international campaign that has been going on since at least 2019,” PST said in a statement.

“Analyses show that it is likely that the operation was led by a cyber actor … known as APT28 or Fancy Bear. This actor has ties to GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency.”

Using a method known as a “brute force attack”, where multiple passwords and usernames are submitted with the hope of eventually getting the right combination, the hackers were able to download “sensitive” information, PST said.

“The investigation has however not yielded enough elements to bring charges,” it said in a statement.

Russia's embassy in Norway has yet to comment on the PST findings, but in October it lambasted Eriksen Søreide's accusation as “unacceptable”.

“We consider this a serious and wilful provocation, destructive for bilateral relations,” the embassy said on its Facebook page at the time.

While relations are generally good between NATO member Norway and Russia, who share a border in the Far North, several espionage cases on both sides have soured relations in recent years.

Norway's intelligence agency regularly singles out Russia as one of the country's main espionage threats alongside Iran and China.

READ ALSO: Norway accuses Russia over cyber attack on parliament

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