Russians are using undiscovered exploits to hack governments
If you've been wondering how Russian cyberattackers could compromise the White House and other high-profile political targets, the security researchers at FireEye have an answer. They've determined that APT28, a politically-motivated Russian hacking group, used unpatched exploits in Flash Player and Windows in a series of assaults against a "specific foreign government organization" on April 13th. Patches for both flaws are either ready or on the way, but the vulnerabilities reinforce beliefs that APT28 is very skilled -- less experienced groups would use off-the-shelf code.
Whether or not APT28 is linked to the earlier White House breach isn't apparent. FireEye says it can't comment on the connections, since that's classified information. If there is a link, though, it'll be clearer than ever that the US (and most of the world, for that matter) is up against a particularly fierce digital espionage campaign.
[Image credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images]
