Hackers Attack European Governments

Hackers targeted dozens of computer systems at government agencies across Europe through a flaw in Adobe Systems Inc's software, while NATO said it too had been attacked. Security experts say governments and organizations such as NATO are attacked on a daily basis.The alliance said its systems had not been compromised, although it was sharing the details of the attack with NATO member state.

 The malware exploited a recently identified security flaw in Adobe's software. Adobe said a software patch issued last week should protect users from "MiniDuke" providing they downloaded it.The Czech counterintelligence agency BIS said they were not aware of any massive hacking attacks on Czech institutions from abroad recently. A NATO official in Brussels had earlier said the alliance was not directly hit, but he said later that he had been incorrect. He gave no further details.

MiniDuke attacked by exploiting recently discovered security bugs in Adobe's Reader and Acrobat software. The attackers sent their targets PDF documents tainted with malware, an approach that hackers have long used to infect personal computers.The MiniDuke operators used an unusual approach to communicate with infected machines. The virus was programmed to search for Tweets from specific Twitter accounts that contained instructions for controlling those personal computers.

Western government and private sector computer experts say China is the clear leader when it comes to state-sponsored cyber attacks to steal information - although they rarely say so publicly and Beijing angrily denies it. There are some interesting aspects to the attacks, pointing to the use of Twitter. (But) most of the attack does not seem that new at all. Some of the... 'tricks', such as using pictures to hide data, are more reminiscent of proficient students rather than government agencies.

 The Austrian Institute for International Affairs, however, the closest attack to this in style was a Trojan dubbed "TinBa" identified two months ago and used for banking fraud attacks. That was suspected to have been built by Russian hackers.