In the United Kingdom, resurgence of pirate attacks targeting civil society

Journalists must imperatively protect their sources and their digital communications (Photo illustration).

Getty Images/fStop - Vasily Pindyurin

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

The British national cybersecurity center is alarmed: attacks from Russia and Iran are becoming more and more frequent.

Hackers are now targeting civil society.  

Advertising

Read more

With our correspondent in London,

Among the targets identified by the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC): journalists, academics and political figures.

The method is often the same.

Hackers pretend to be a colleague, a lecturer or even a journalist and establish a relationship of trust with their victim, to then send a infected link and access their data.

This is the spear phishing method. 

The objective, according to the NCSC, is to recover potentially sensitive data.

But not to subtract money.

If hackers adopt similar methods, the center names two groups: Seaborgium, based in Russia and already suspected of having hacked the former head of foreign intelligence.

The other collective, nicknamed “Chaton Charmant” is linked to the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. 

The Cyber ​​Security Center advises all designated targets to exercise the utmost caution.

By receiving emails from unknown people, before clicking on any link and by implementing double authentication systems to reduce account vulnerability. 

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

• UK

• Cybercriminality