Two government agencies in Hong Kong attacked by hackers, US firm says
American network security company believes perpetrators were mainland group which carried out cyberattacks for political reasons
Two Hong Kong government agencies were victims of cyberattacks by a “sophisticated” group of mainland hackers last month, a US network security firm has suggested.
The attacks, which came ahead of the Legislative Council elections on Sunday, were said to be “certainly” politically motivated, judging from the targets, which were not identified.
The Office of the Government Chief Information Officer confirmed the incident, but insisted operations of the concerned departments were not affected and that no information was leaked.
A report carried by Bloomberg on Thursday quoted computer security company FireEye as saying that malware – short for malicious software – was detected to have infiltrated the network of two Hong Kong government agencies. It is believed that a group of high-level mainland hackers known as APT 3 was behind the attacks, which happened on “at least three occasions”.
Using a method called “spear phishing”, the hackers sent out emails purporting to show a hyperlink of a report on the election results. Once accessed, the link would direct the user to a domain which contained the malware.