The government of Netherlands has accused Russian intelligence of cyber attacking the database related to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons(OPCW). Officials say that the spying activity was identified on April 13th this year and 4 Russian agents were expelled from the country by Ank Bijleveld Schouten- the Dutch Minister of Defense.
Early this morning, officials from the Chemical weapons watchdog showed evidence for their claim which includes photo evidence of a rental vehicle that was found parked at the OPCW headquarter in the Hague and was found to be filled with computers, transformers, jammers, and necessary software – all used for spying activities.
NOTE- The Dutch Ministry of Defense organized a press conference this morning and said that the alleged 4 Russian agents arrived in the Netherlands with Diplomatic Passports and were actually working for Russian Intelligence GRU.
According to Ria Novosti State News Agency, Russia is planning to sue the Dutch Ambassador on Monday for spreading cyberattack claims.
In other news related to Cyber Attack, Bloomberg revealed that it has 17 unnamed sources as evidence which said Chinese spies had placed computer chips inside equipment of around 30 companies which includes Apple and Amazon.
A source from Bloomberg says that Beijing placed spying chips in the supply chain of a hardware company called ‘Supermicro’ and the work was done by an intelligence unit of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
It’s said that a hacking group named as Cloudhopper and linked to China has already launched a campaign of stealing data from its clients via technology service providers and has succeeded in knowing the most critical secrets of the public and private companies operating in the west.
Moreover, the spying chips and related software placed in the devices can also be used to launch DDoS cyber attacks in the future says, Bloomberg.
However, Apple and Amazon denied the report of Bloomberg and clarified that their systems did not contain any malicious computer chips inserted by Chinese Intelligence which would give Beijing secret access to internal networks.
