Russian hackers attacked the UK Ministry of Defense under the guise of journalists

Russian hacking group RomCom attempted to hack into the accounts of employees of the UK Ministry of Defence under the guise of journalists. The attack was unsuccessful, but overall, there have been twice as many hacking attacks on the country's defence department in the past two years as in the previous similar period, Sky News reports .

As the channel notes, in the specific case of the Russian group RomCom, cybercriminals initially sent two letters to the Ministry of Defense, purporting to be from a news organization with a journalistic request. The letters contained phishing links.

Later, several more emails on financial topics were received, which contained links directing the recipients to a commercial file-sharing site.

The code used by RomCom had not been used before, and the British side gave it the name "Damascus Peacock".

Specialists from the British Ministry of Defense neutralized the threat in time.

The attack by Russian hackers was one of more than 90,000 cyberattacks linked to hostile states that have been directed at the British armed forces and other defence units in the past two years, the agency said. This figure is double the number in the previous two years.

It is noted that this increase is partly due to the fact that the military is improving methods for detecting attempted attacks on its networks. But the number of attacks and their complexity are increasing.

In this regard, the UK government has stepped up the fight against hacking threats and created a new cyber command to oversee offensive and defensive cyber operations.

• On May 21, the United Kingdom, along with 10 allied countries, issued a warning about a Russian military intelligence cyber campaign targeting organizations involved in providing foreign aid to Ukraine.