Dutch intelligence links Russia to 2024 cyberattacks on police and allies
A previously unidentified Russian hacking group was responsible for 2024 cyberattacks targeting the Netherlands' police networks, NATO and several European countries, Dutch intelligence services have revealed.
Source: The Telegraph, as reported by European Pravda
Details: The Dutch General Intelligence Agency and Military Agency stated that the group, known as Laundry Bear, likely operated with Russian state support.
"The cyberattacks against Dutch institutions are part of a larger international cyber threat posed by the hacker group," Dutch intelligence noted in a statement.
Intelligence officials highlighted that Laundry Bear also conducted cyber espionage against companies producing high-tech products. Russia is restricted from accessing these products due to Western sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.
The statement added that the group sought information related to "the procurement and production of military equipment by Western governments and Western arms deliveries to Ukraine".
Background:
Notably, in late September 2024, Dutch intelligence and security services reported a hack compromising the work contact details – names, email addresses, and phone numbers – of nearly all 65,000 Dutch police officers. In some cases, personal data was also stolen.
The Dutch justice minister stated that the cyberattack had also affected some prosecutors, probation officers and lawyers, all of whom had been notified.
At the time, the Netherlands indicated that another state was behind the cyberattack.
In late April, the Dutch military intelligence agency reported that Russia was intensifying hybrid attacks aimed at destabilising society in the Netherlands and its European allies, with Russian hackers already targeting Dutch civil service systems.
Support Ukrainska Pravda on Patreon!
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
11 minutes ago
- Yahoo
EU plan would limit Chinese device makers in Europe
This story was originally published on MedTech Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily MedTech Dive newsletter. European Union member states this week voted to support a plan to adopt measures that would restrict Chinese medical device makers' access to the EU market. The member states took the action, under the EU's International Procurement Instrument, after concluding an investigation in January that looked at China's practices in the public procurement market for medical devices. The investigation found that government practices unfairly encouraged Chinese hospitals to choose domestic manufacturers' products. 'The Commission has identified measures and practices in the Chinese procurement market that lead to discrimination against EU operators and EU-made supplies,' Olof Gill, commission spokesperson, said Thursday in an emailed statement. 'This discrimination also harms both the Chinese healthcare infrastructure, which is deprived of quality equipment, and EU businesses, with a high cost in terms of jobs and economic activity in the EU.' The commission has discussed its concerns with Chinese authorities. However, a satisfactory solution has not been proposed, and the EU had no other option than to tackle the issue through an IPI investigation, Gill wrote. The commission said it could not disclose the content of the draft IPI measure or next steps in the process. Chinese manufacturers would be prohibited from bidding on public procurement contracts worth more than 5 million euros for five years. In addition, no more than 50% of a contract's value may be subcontracted to Chinese entities or include Chinese-origin medical devices, MedTech Europe said in a statement. The trade group said it would provide further updates once the IPI measures are published in the EU's official journal. The EU investigation into China's medical device procurement practices was the first use of the IPI, which was introduced in 2022. Getting fair access to Chinese markets became more challenging for medical device companies after the country launched a program calling for domestically produced medical equipment to achieve 50% market penetration in county-level hospitals by 2020 and 70% by 2025, according to a statement from the European Chamber, which represents European businesses in China. European and Chinese leaders will meet in July at a summit in Beijing. Recommended Reading EU mulls retaliation after showing China's bias against foreign device firms Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War
The empire strikes back. Last week, Ukrainian spies destroyed a large chunk of Russia's fearsome nuclear bomber fleet using small, smuggled drones. On Friday, Russia retaliated with some of the largest air raids against Ukraine to date. The Russian air raids killed eight Ukrainians and wounded 46. They also sent the message that, as Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday, the current round of peace talks is over. On the whole, however, neither the Ukrainian guerrilla operation nor the old-fashioned Russian retaliation changed the course of the war. Russia has a slight, but not decisive, advantage. Russian forces have been gaining ground in Ukraine at a slow rate and high cost. Although they have continued to suffer from manpower shortages, Ukrainian forces have managed to inflict greater losses on the Russian side. The human butchery on the front lines can continue for the time being. Of course, the attack on the Russian nuclear bomber fleet matters a lot for the global balance of power. And Ukraine has grown quite bold at attacking Russian interests outside of Ukraine. Ukrainian operatives have reportedly blown up the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, captured Russian mercenaries in Sudan, enabled Tuareg rebels to kill dozens more Russian mercenaries in Mali, and trained Syrian rebels to use drones against the former government of Bashar Assad, a Russian ally. Rather than changing the balance of forces on the battlefield, these moves serve two psychological purposes. On one hand, they blunt Putin's confidence that he can simply wait Ukraine out. U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told European leaders last month that Putin doesn't want to end the war because he believes Russia is winning. On the other hand, Ukrainian operations help demonstrate Ukraine's usefulness to its foreign backers. Even more than having to justify the financial cost of U.S. aid, over $128 billion in total, Ukraine has to compete for scarce physical resources with other theaters of war. (Late last month, the U.S. military decided to move anti-drone proximity fuzes from Ukraine to American forces in the Middle East.) And Trump has made no secret of his belief that Ukraine is a freeloader that doesn't "have the cards." After the drone attack, Ukrainian spokespeople bragged that they do, in fact, hold "the cards." The Trump administration was reportedly very impressed by the "badass" Ukrainian attack. As one White House adviser told Axios, "you've got a chihuahua inflicting some real damage on a much bigger dog." Feats of reckless defiance might prove more effective than the half-baked scheme to market Ukraine's non-existent mineral wealth to Trump. Many political figures have misread Trump as someone who enjoys flattery. But he does not necessarily respect those who grovel before him, whether it's domestic politicians or allied heads of state, and he does enjoy winning over adversaries. Congress is also getting ready to impose new economic sanctions on Russia, something that Trump has threatened to do over the past few months. The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House is fighting to "water down" the legislation, but the dispute seems to be more about keeping the president's options open to lifting sanctions than the strength of the pressure. Unlike in the Middle East, where U.S. enemies are relatively weak and American partners are extremely reliant on U.S. support, the United States does not have an easy "off" switch for the Russian-Ukraine war. Europe provides Ukraine with slightly more aid than the United States. Although U.S. aid to Ukraine has been massive—and irreplaceable in the areas of air defense and intelligence—Ukraine can fight on for quite a while with European support and its own domestic capabilities. "Both sides are suffering before you pull them apart, before they're able to be pulled apart," Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday. "You see in hockey, you see it in sports. The referees let them go for a couple of seconds, let them go for a little while before you pull them apart." That's a lot of suffering in the meantime. A recent estimate put overall casualties of the war—which includes both wounded and killed—at 1.2 million troops since 2022. And the United Nations has recorded 45,000 civilian casualties in Ukraine throughout the war. Each of those numbers represents a family torn apart forever. However depressing the situation sounds, the fact that neither side has a clear path to victory means that they will both have to come back to the negotiating table. It's in America's interest for this war to end as quickly as possible, and as other conflicts show, the U.S. can do a lot of good as a distant but powerful mediator. The post The Latest Escalation Between Russia and Ukraine Isn't Changing the Course of the War appeared first on
Scientific American
22 minutes ago
- Scientific American
The Trump-Musk Fight Could Have Huge Consequences for U.S. Space Programs
For several hours yesterday, an explosively escalating social media confrontation between arguably the world's richest man, Elon Musk, and the world's most powerful, President Donald Trump, shook U.S. spaceflight to its core. The pair had been bosom-buddy allies ever since Musk's fateful endorsement of Trump last July—an event that helped propel Trump to an electoral victory and his second presidential term. But on May 28 Musk announced his departure from his official role overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service. And on May 31 the White House announced that it was withdrawing Trump's nomination of Musk's close associate Jared Isaacman to lead NASA. Musk abruptly went on the attack against the Trump administration, criticizing the budget-busting One Big Beautiful Bill Act, now navigating through Congress, as ' a disgusting abomination.' Things got worse from there as the blowup descended deeper into threats and insults. On June 5 Trump suggested on his own social-media platform, Truth Social, that he could terminate U.S. government contracts with Musk's companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. Less than an hour later, the conflict suddenly grew more personal, with Musk taking to X, the social media platform he owns, to accuse Trump —without evidence—of being incriminated by as-yet-unreleased government documents related to the illegal activities of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. Musk upped the ante further in follow-up posts in which he endorsed a suggestion for impeaching Trump and, separately, declared in a now deleted post that because of the president's threat, SpaceX 'will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.' (Some five hours after his decommissioning comment, tempers had apparently cooled enough for Musk to walk back the remark in another X post: 'Ok, we won't decommission Dragon.') Dragon is a crucial workhorse of U.S. human spaceflight. It's the main way NASA's astronauts get to and from the International Space Station (ISS) and also a key component of a contract between NASA and SpaceX to safely deorbit the ISS in 2031. If Dragon were to be no longer be available, NASA would, in the near term, have to rely on either Russian Soyuz vehicles or on Boeing's glitch-plagued Starliner spacecraft for its crew transport—and the space agency's plans for deorbiting the ISS would essentially go back to the drawing board. More broadly, NASA uses SpaceX rockets to launch many of its science missions, and the company is contracted to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the moon as part of the space agency's Artemis III mission. Trump's and Musk's retaliatory tit for tat also raises the disconcerting possibility of disrupting other SpaceX-centric parts of U.S. space plans, many of which are seen as critical for national security. Thanks to its wildly successful reusable Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, the company presently provides the vast majority of space launches for the Department of Defense. And SpaceX's constellation of more than 7,000 Starlink communications satellites has become vitally important to war fighters in the ongoing conflict between Russia and U.S.-allied Ukraine. SpaceX is also contracted to build a massive constellation of spy satellites for the DOD and is considered a leading candidate for launching space-based interceptors envisioned as part of Trump's 'Golden Dome' missile-defense plan. Among the avalanche of reactions to the incendiary spectacle unfolding in real time, one of the most extreme was from Trump's influential former adviser Steve Bannon, who called on the president to seize and nationalize SpaceX. And in an interview with the New York Times, Bannon, without evidence, accused Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen, of being an 'illegal alien' who 'should be deported from the country immediately.' NASA, for its part, attempted to stay above the fray via a carefully worded late-afternoon statement from the space agency's press secretary Bethany Stevens: 'NASA will continue to execute upon the President's vision for the future of space,' Stevens wrote. 'We will continue to work with our industry partners to ensure the President's objectives in space are met.' The response from the stock market was, in its own way, much less muted. SpaceX is not a publicly traded company. But Musk's electric car company Tesla is. And it experienced a massive sell-off at the end of June 5's trading day: Tesla's share price fell down by 14 percent, losing the company a whopping $152 billion of its market value. Today a rumored détente phone conversation between the two men has apparently been called off, and Trump has reportedly said he now intends to sell the Tesla he purchased in March in what was then a gesture of support for Musk. But there are some signs the rift may yet heal: Musk has yet to be deported; SpaceX has not been shut down; Tesla's stock price is surging back from its momentary heavy losses; and it seems NASA astronauts won't be stranded on Earth or on the ISS for the time being. Even so, the entire sordid episode—and the possibility of further messy clashes between Trump and Musk unfolding in public—highlights a fundamental vulnerability at the heart of the nation's deep reliance on SpaceX for access to space. Outsourcing huge swaths of civil and military space programs to a disruptively innovative private company effectively controlled by a single individual certainly has its rewards—but no shortage of risks, too.
