Russian hackers used Windows flaw to steal NATO data
According to security firm iSight Partners, hackers from Russia recently gained access to sensitive NATO documents using a major flaw in Windows. The attack, which targeted data from a NATO summit last month, was reportedly part of an espionage campaign against members of the organization (such as the US, UK, France and Germany) to learn more about how it planned to react to Russia's "military intervention" in Ukraine. Furthermore, the same zero-day flaw is believed to be affecting "tens of millions of computers" that are running Microsoft's operating system -- a definite cause for concern. The great news, however, is that the Redmond-based technology titan is now aware of this security flaw and will be patching it today, the company told Bloomberg in a statement.
For its part, iSight Partners states the Russian hackers were trying to get so much data, so quick, that they made enough mistakes to shed light on spying efforts that have been ongoing for the past two years. "There are only a few people in the world who would be really interested in this stuff and would have the tools to get it," iSight Partners' Senior Manager for Cyber-espionage Threat Intelligence, John Hultquist, said to Bloomberg. "It's just the nature of the game."
