Martin Fornusek reports:
Russian-linked hackers targeted U.K. Defense Ministry staff in an espionage operation while posing as journalists, Sky News reported on May 29, citing the British government.
The cyber attack was detected and thwarted, the government said.
Speaking to reporters at a government facility where a team had disrupted the Russian-backed operation, U.K. Defense Minister John Healey revealed the formation of a new cyber command tasked with managing both offensive and defensive cyber efforts.
“The nature of warfare is changing,” Healey said, according to Sky News. “The keyboard is now a weapon of war and we are responding to that.”
Read more at Kyiv Independent.
According to Sky News reporting:
“The initial campaign consisted of two emails with a journalistic theme attempting to represent a news organisation. The second campaign followed a financial theme, directing targets to a commercial file share.”
The malware was linked to a Russian hacking group called RomCom, a second official said.
The particular code that was used had not been seen before, so the British side gave it the name “Damascened Peacock”.