Who carried out unprecedented Singapore cyberattack? Experts are pointing to ‘state actors’
The hackers used a computer infected with malware to gain access to the database between June 27 and July 4 before administrators spotted ‘unusual activity’, authorities said
State-actors were likely behind Singapore’s biggest ever cyberattack to date, security experts say, citing the scale and sophistication of the hack.
The city state announced Friday that hackers had broken into a government database and stolen the health records of 1.5 million Singaporeans, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who was specifically targeted in the “unprecedented” attack.
Singapore’s health minister said the strike was “a deliberate, targeted, and well-planned cyberattack and not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs”.
While officials refused to comment on the identity of the hackers citing “operational security”, experts said the complexity of the attack and its focus on high-profile targets like the prime minister pointed to the hand of a state-actor.
“A cyberespionage threat actor could leverage disclosure of sensitive health information … to coerce an individual in [a] position of interest to conduct espionage” on its behalf, said Eric Hoh, Asia-Pacific president of cybersecurity firm FireEye.