Atlantic Council

From Views and News from Norway: Norwegian military personnel were the targets of what’s being described as a “massive” cyber attack this spring, one day after Norway started bombing Libya with other UN- and NATO-backed forces. Newspaper VG reported Thursday that they fended off the attack, which was considered the most serious ever experienced.

“The defense systems are attacked daily, but it’s not often we see such a comprehensive attempt at infiltration as this was,” [ Major General Roar] Sundseth told VG Nett. “The trend is increasing, though, and the attackers are more goal-oriented. . . .”

“It came just a short time after the decision was made to send Norwegian forces to the operation in Libya,” confirmed Major Ivar Kjærem of the military’s center for protection of critical information (Forsvarets senter for besyttelse of kritisk informasjon, FSKI). “We haven’t seen such an attack so close to conflicts Norway has been involved in earlier, but we can’t say there’s a connection.”

Norway’s special police intelligence unit PST is investigating the attack. Norway’s National Security Authority (Nasjonal sikkerhetsmyndighet, NSM) has registered steadily increasing numbers of attacks and spying attempts on various Norwegian government agencies and state institutions.