Russia To Hack Strategic Companies Worldwide Using The ‘Energetic Bear’ Campaign

Reports say that Russia and its government have been hacking energetic companies in Europe, Asia and the US. It comes under a sort of campaign named “Energetic Bear”, which is said to target companies in 23 or more countries . The information comes from the cyber security firm called CrowdStrike which posted a report about its findings in this matter.

Up until now, China was considered one of the “active” countries to target specific companies in order to steal key information for their own profit. This time, CrowdStrike points its finger to Russia. This does not come as a surprise, since there are experienced hackers in the country known for stealing passwords and credit card information during the years. Another case that puts Russia on the radar is the incident in Estonia seven years ago, where Russia reportedly unleashed a cyber attack on Estonia to disable the country’s technological equipment, including the Internet in the country.

“It’s always hard to get a smoking gun in these type of cases,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, the cofounder and CTO of CrowdStrike. Any specific names and details of those behind the attack are unclear, but Alperovitch is confident that the Russian government was involved.

The reason why CrowdStrike thinks the government is involved is based on the hacking activity. They say that the hackers work on a 9 to 5 basis (Moscow hours), the working hours of a normal government employee. The study was based on two years of monitoring the activity out of Russia. Other aspects that point to the Russian government’s involvement lie in the targets so far. It is said that the companies which suffered attacks are Russian competitors, which makes sense for them to gather sensitive information to their advantage as an outcome of the Energetic Bear project.

The methods used are considered to be as complex as the Chinese, using spyware on websites they expect victims to access, commonly known as strategic web compromise. The hackers also targeted European defence contractors, governments and energy companies worldwide to gather trade secrets, sensitive data and intellectual property.

Thank you Mashable for providing us with this information