Tens of Romanian military email accounts have been hacked by Russian hackers. Ukrainian prosecutors and officials from Bulgaria, Greece, and Serbia were also affected.
The data was accidentally exposed on the internet by hackers and discovered by Ctrl-Alt-Intel – a team of British and American researchers specializing in cyber threats.
The majority of the victims of cyber attacks were in Ukraine, but targets in Romania and other NATO countries neighboring Ukraine and in the Balkans were also targeted, reports hotnews.ro. In Romania, hackers compromised at least 67 email accounts of the Romanian Air Forces, including several belonging to NATO air bases and at least one account of a high-ranking military officer.
Regarding Ukraine, the accounts of military prosecutors were targeted, and at the Agency for Recovery and Management of Assets in Ukraine, the director’s email was compromised.
Hackers have compromised 27 email addresses managed by the Greek National Defense General Staff. Accounts of military attachés from India and Bosnia were breached, as well as a public email.
In Bulgaria, hackers have breached at least four email accounts belonging to local officials in the Plovdiv province. The data also shows that the accounts of academics and military officials from Serbia have been hacked.
The information emerged against the backdrop of Nicușor Dan’s revelations that the FBI and SRI have dismantled a prolonged cyber attack on sensitive infrastructure in several Western states.
According to SRI, the Russian intelligence service GRU “has compromised a wide range of entities at a global level, including from Romania, specifically targeting critical infrastructures and information in the military and governmental sectors”.