Tesla will recall 53,000 cars globally to fix a parking brake issue

Image Credits: Reuters

Tesla Inc said on Thursday it would recall 53,000 of its Model S and Model X cars globally to fix a parking brake issue. Shares of the U.S. luxury electric car maker were down nearly 1 percent at $302.77 in afternoon trading, following its biggest ever recall.  Tesla’s total production for 2016 was 83,922 vehicles and included both Model S and Model X.

“The electric parking brakes installed on Model S and Model X vehicles built between February and October 2016 may contain a small gear that could have been manufactured improperly by our third-party supplier,” Tesla said in a statement on its website. The car maker said there had been no accidents or injuries due to the issue.

Tesla said less than 5 percent of the vehicles being recalled may be affected and it would take less than 45 minutes to replace the brakes. The company also said it would send an official recall notice to its customers.  Tesla, led by entrepreneur Elon Musk, had said last year it would recall 2,700 Model X sport utility vehicles in the United States due to a faulty locking hinge in third-row seats.

The company said on Thursday it was working with Italian supplier Freni Brembo SpA to get the replacement parts. Brembo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Reuters

Publish date: April 21, 2017 8:53 am| Modified date: April 21, 2017 8:53 am

WikiLeaks reveals that NSA has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks

The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been spying on Pakistan’s mobile networks, whistleblowing organisation WikiLeaks has tweeted. “Hundreds of NSA cyber weapons variants publicly released including code showing hacking of Pakistan mobile system,” @wikileaks tweeted.

According to a report in Express Tribune on Monday, the hacker group “Shadow Brokers” released a new cache of information detailing how the NSA accessed private and public networks in other countries. A researcher on Twitter who identifies himself as ‘x0rz’ decrypted the files and uploaded them on Github, a web-based repository and internet hosting service.

“The researcher confirmed that the archives include evidence of NSA operators’ access inside the GSM network of Mobilink – one of the Pakistan’s most popular mobile services provider,” the report noted. The hacker group had previously released data suggesting the US agency may have been monitoring hundreds of IP addresses in Pakistan. The encrypted files were being decrypted by security researchers around the world.

“Shadow Brokers” had initially wanted to auction its data cache in exchange for Bitcoin but as no buyer turned up, they released the data online. This is not the first time that reports have surfaced claiming that the US NSA is snooping on other countries. According to a Daily Mail report in 2014, WikiLeaks disclosed documents that suggested the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was among six political parties from around the world the NSA was authorised to conduct surveillance on for gathering foreign intelligence. The authorisation was given by a secret American court, it said.

The leak was planned months ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US, the report claimed. Another report in the Washington Post that also came in 2014 said the US has long had broad no-spying arrangements with four countries – Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – in a group known collectively as the “Five Eyes”.

“But a classified 2010 legal certification – approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and included among a set of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – lists 193 countries [including India], that would be of valid interest for US intelligence,” the Post said.

Publish date: April 12, 2017 11:45 am| Modified date: April 12, 2017 11:41 am

Amazon will refund about $70 million to its users for unauthorised in-app purchases

Image Credits: Reuters

Amazon has decided to refund up to $70 million to its users, a move that comes a year after the company was found guilty of illegally billing users for unauthorised in-app purchases. The in-app charges occurred from purchases made by kids when playing with freemium apps.

A US federal court in 2016 ruled that Amazon had failed to “clearly inform parents that free apps may still include in-app purchases, and did not provide enough notice and password requirements to prevent unwanted charges.” According to a report in Verge on Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimated that parents were charged upwards of $70 million between November 2011 and May 2016.

According to the FTC, Amazon will begin is refund programme “shortly”. In November 2016, Amazon had requested a US district court that it would make refunds in form of gift cards, but the request was rejected. It is, therefore, expected that the company will refund affected customers money back directly to their debit or credit card, or through paper checks.

Publish date: April 5, 2017 1:40 pm| Modified date: April 5, 2017 1:40 pm

Internet providers in US say that they are not going to sell their consumers’ internet browsing history

Representational Image : Reuters

Comcast Corp, Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc said Friday they would not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information, days after the US Congress approved legislation reversing Obama administration era internet privacy rules.

The bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under former President Barack Obama requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers’ privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc’s Google or Facebook Inc . The easing of restrictions has sparked growing anger on social media sites.

“We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so,” said Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer. He added Comcast is revising its privacy policy to make more clear that “we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties.”

Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so in the future, said spokesman Richard Young. Verizon privacy officer Karen Zacharia said in a blog post Friday the company has two programs that use customer browsing data. One allows marketers to access “de-identified information to determine which customers fit into groups that advertisers are trying to reach” while the other “provides aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses.”

Republicans in Congress Tuesday narrowly passed the repeal of the rules with no Democratic support and over the objections of privacy advocates. The vote was a win for internet providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast and Verizon. Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules. The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump plans to sign the repeal of the rules, which had not taken effect.

Under the rules, internet providers would have needed to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children’s information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. Websites do not need the same affirmative consent. Some in Congress suggested providers would begin selling personal data to the highest bidder, while others vowed to raise money to buy browsing histories of Republicans.

AT&T says in its privacy statement it “will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period.” In a blog post Friday, AT&T said it would not change those policies after Trump signs the repeal. Websites and internet service providers do use and sell aggregated customer data to advertisers. Republicans say the rules unfairly would give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet providers.

Trade group USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in an op-ed Friday for website Axios that individual “browser history is already being aggregated and sold to advertising networks – by virtually every site you visit on the internet.” This week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans “believe that their private information should be just that.”

Reuters

Publish date: April 3, 2017 12:54 pm| Modified date: April 3, 2017 12:55 pm

WikiLeaks Vault 7 documents about vulnerable Cisco products exposes US govt’s stance on cyber security

Image Credit: REUTERS

When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disclosed earlier this month that his anti-secrecy group had obtained CIA tools for hacking into technology products made by U.S. companies, security engineers at Cisco Systems swung into action.

The Wikileaks documents described how the Central Intelligence Agency had learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco’s widely used Internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable eavesdropping.

Senior Cisco managers immediately reassigned staff from other projects to figure out how the CIA hacking tricks worked, so they could help customers patch their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using the same methods, three employees told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The Cisco engineers worked around the clock for days to analyze the means of attack, create fixes, and craft a stopgap warning about a security risk affecting more than 300 different products, said the employees, who had direct knowledge of the effort.

That a major U.S. company had to rely on WikiLeaks to learn about security problems well-known to U.S. intelligence agencies underscores concerns expressed by dozens of current and former U.S. intelligence and security officials about the government’s approach to cybersecurity. That policy overwhelmingly emphasizes offensive cyber-security capabilities over defensive measures, these people told Reuters, even as an increasing number of U.S. organizations have been hit by hacks attributed to foreign governments.

Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House Situation Room in the Obama administration, said now that others were catching up to the United States in their cyber capabilities, “maybe it is time to take a pause and fully consider the ramifications of what we’re doing.” U.S. intelligence agencies blamed Russia for the hack of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election. Nation-states are also believed to be behind the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the 2015 breach of the U.S. Government’s Office of Personnel Management.

CIA spokeswoman Heather Fritz Horniak declined to comment on the Cisco case, but said it was the agency’s “job to be innovative, cutting-edge, and the first line of defense in protecting this country from enemies abroad.” The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the CIA and NSA, referred questions to the White House, which declined to comment.

Across the federal government, about 90 percent of all spending on cyber programs is dedicated to offensive efforts, including penetrating the computer systems of adversaries, listening to communications and developing the means to disable or degrade infrastructure, senior intelligence officials told Reuters.

President Donald Trump’s budget proposal would put about $1.5 billion into cyber-security defense at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Private industry and the military also spend money to protect themselves.

But the secret part of the U.S. intelligence budget alone totaled about $50 billion annually as of 2013, documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden show. Just 8 percent of that figure went toward “enhanced cyber security,” while 72 percent was dedicated to collecting strategic intelligence and fighting violent extremism.

Departing NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett confirmed in an interview that 90 percent of government cyber spending was on offensive efforts and agreed it was lopsided. “It’s actually something we’re trying to address” with more appropriations in the military budget, Ledgett said. “As the cyber threat rises, the need for more and better cyber defense and information assurance is increasing as well.”

The long-standing emphasis on offense stems in part from the mission of the NSA, which has the most advanced cyber capabilities of any U.S. agency. It is responsible for the collection of intelligence overseas and also for helping defend government systems. It mainly aids U.S. companies indirectly, by assisting other agencies.

“I absolutely think we should be placing significantly more effort on the defense, particularly in light of where we are with exponential growth in threats and capabilities and intentions,” said Debora Plunkett, who headed the NSA’s defensive mission from 2010 to 2014.

Government Role

How big a role the government should play in defending the private sector remains a matter of debate. Former military and intelligence leaders such as ex-NSA Director Keith Alexander and former Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter say that U.S. companies and other institutions cannot be solely responsible for defending themselves against the likes of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.

For tech companies, the government’s approach is frustrating, executives and engineers say. Sophisticated hacking campaigns typically rely on flaws in computer products. When the NSA or CIA find such flaws, under current policies they often choose to keep them for offensive attacks, rather than tell the companies.

In the case of Cisco, the company said the CIA did not inform the company after the agency learned late last year that information about the hacking tools had been leaked. “Cisco remains steadfast in the position that we should be notified of all vulnerabilities if they are found, so we can fix them and notify customers,” said company spokeswoman Yvonne Malmgren.

Side by Side

A recent reorganization at the NSA, known as NSA21, eliminated the branch that was explicitly responsible for defense, the Information Assurance Directorate (IAD), the largest cyber-defense workforce in the government. Its mission has now been combined with the dominant force in the agency, signals intelligence, in a broad operations division.

Top NSA officials, including director Mike Rogers, argue that it is better to have offensive and defensive specialists working side by side. Other NSA and White House veterans contend that perfect defense is impossible and therefore more resources should be poured into penetrating enemy networks – both to head off attacks and to determine their origin.

Curtis Dukes, the last head of IAD, said in an interview after retiring last month that he feared defense would get even less attention in a structure where it does not have a leader with a direct line to the NSA director. “It’s incumbent on the NSA to say, ‘This is an important mission’,” Dukes said. “That has not occurred.”

Reuters

Publish date: March 30, 2017 7:14 pm| Modified date: March 30, 2017 7:14 pm

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NSA fears talent drain as low morale and worries about Trump’s leadership take toll

  01 Mar 2017 , 19:21

The National Security Agency (NSA) risks a brain-drain of hackers and cyber spies due to a tumultuous reorganization and worries about the acrimonious relationship between the intelligence community and President Donald Trump, according to current and former NSA officials and cybersecurity industry sources. Half-a-dozen cybersecurity executives told Reuters they had witnessed a marked increase in the number of U.S. intelligence officers and government contractors seeking employment in the private sector since Trump took office on January 20.

One of the executives, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said he was stunned by the caliber of the would-be recruits. They are coming from a variety of government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, multiple executives said, and their interest stems in part from concerns about the direction of U.S intelligence agencies under Trump.

Retaining and recruiting talented technical personnel has become a top national security priority in recent years as Russia, China, Iran and other nation states and criminal groups have sharpened their cyber offensive abilities. NSA and other intelligence agencies have long struggled to deter some of their best employees from leaving for higher-paying jobs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. The problem is especially acute at NSA, current and former officials said, due to a reorganization known as NSA21 that began last year and aims to merge the agency’s electronic eavesdropping and domestic cyber-security operations.

The two-year overhaul includes expanding parts of NSA that deal with business management and human resources and putting them on par with research and engineering. The aim is to “ensure that we’re using all of our resources to maximum effect to accomplish our mission,” NSA Director Mike Rogers said. The changes include new management structures that have left some career employees uncertain about their missions and prospects. Former employees say the reorganization has failed to address widespread concerns that the agency is falling behind in exploiting private-sector technological breakthroughs.

A former top NSA official said he had been told by three current officials that budget problems meant there was too little money for promotions. That is especially important for younger employees, who sometimes need two jobs to make ends meet in the expensive Washington D.C. area, the official said. “Morale is as low as I’ve ever seen it,” said another former senior NSA official, who maintains close contact with current employees.

Asked about the risk of losing talent from NSA and other agencies, White House spokesman Michael Anton said Trump had sought to reassure the intelligence community by visiting the CIA headquarters on his first full day in office. Anton also pointed to the military spending increase in Trump’s budget proposal released on Monday.

It will likely take more than a visit to the CIA to patch up relations with the intelligence community, the current and former officials said. Trump has attacked findings from intelligence agencies that Russia hacked emails belonging to Democratic Party operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign to help him win, though he did eventually accept the findings. In January, Trump accused intelligence agencies of leaking false information and said it was reminiscent of tactics used in Nazi Germany.

How many?

The breadth of any exodus from the NSA and other intelligence agencies is difficult to quantify. The NSA has “seen a steady rise” in the attrition rate among its roughly 36,000 employees since 2009, and it now sits at a “little less than six percent,” according to an NSA spokesman. NSA director Michael Rogers said last year that the attrition rate was 3.3 percent in 2015, suggesting a sharp jump in departures since then.

Several senior NSA officials who have left or plan to leave, including deputy director Richard Ledgett and the head of cyber defence, Curtis Dukes, have said their departures were unrelated to Trump or the reorganization. Some turnover is normal with any new administration, government and industry officials noted, and a stronger economy has also improved pay and prospects in the private sector.

“During this time the economy has been recovering from the recession, unemployment rates have been falling and the demand for highly skilled technical talent has been increasing,” an NSA spokesman said, when asked to comment on the reports of employee departures. In a statement, Kathy Hutson, NSA’s chief of human resources, said the agency continues “to attract amazing talent necessary to conduct the security mission the nation needs.”

Controversial Boss

Some NSA veterans attribute the morale issues and staff departures to the leadership style of Rogers, who took over the spy agency in 2014 with the task of dousing an international furore caused by leaks from former contractor Edward Snowden. Concern about Rogers reached an apex last October, when former Defense Secretary Ash Carter and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper recommended to then-President Barack Obama that Rogers be removed.

The NSA did not respond to a request for comment on the recommendation last fall that Rogers be replaced. Rogers is now expected to retain his job at NSA for at least another year, according to former officials. Rogers acknowledged concerns about potential morale problems last month, telling a congressional committee that Trump’s broadsides against the intelligence community could create “a situation where our workforce decides to walk.”

Trump’s criticism of the intelligence community has exacerbated the stress caused by the reorganization at the NSA, said Susan Hennessey, a former NSA lawyer now with Brookings Institution. The “tone coming from the White House makes an already difficult situation worse, by eroding the sense of common purpose and service,” she said. A wave of departures of career personnel, Hennessey added, “would represent an incalculable loss to national security.”

Reuters

FBI starts three probes in suspected Russian hacking of U.S presidential elections

Image Credit: Venture Beat

  19 Feb 2017 , 11:11

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation. While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.

The FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee’s computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.

The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said. Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.

Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said. This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.

Reuters could not confirm which entities and individuals were under scrutiny. Scott Smith, the FBI’s new assistant director for cyber crime, declined to comment this week on which FBI offices were doing what or how far they had progressed. The White House had no comment on Friday on the Russian hacking investigations. A spokesman pointed to a comment Trump made during the campaign, in which he said: “As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people.”

During a news conference Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had no business connections to Russia. The people who spoke to Reuters also corroborated a Tuesday New York Times report that Americans with ties to Trump or his campaign had repeated contacts with current and former Russian intelligence officers before the November election. Those alleged contacts are among the topics of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.

Reuters

Twitter’s Periscope adds ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’ to app loading screen

  31 Jan 2017 , 16:13

As a mark of protest against the US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope has updated its loading screen with a small text that reads “Proudly made in America by immigrants”. In a statement, Periscope said on Tuesday that the recent executive order to halt immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa forced them to consider a disturbing alternate reality in which the Periscope team is irreparably changed.

“Periscope is built, maintained, and operated by people from many faiths and countries. Without immigrants and refugees, Periscope would not exist. For this reason, we are updating the Periscope loading screen to make a simple true statement: ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’,” the statement read. According to a report in VentureBeat, messaging giant Viber revealed it would be offering free calls from the US to the seven countries affected by the executive order.

Google has pledged $4 million to four organisations that support immigrants, while Uber will help drivers with their immigration defence by contributing a $3 million pot. Airbnb has announced free temporary housing to those affected by the order. Earlier, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in his support to the immigrants termed the executive order’s impact as upsetting.

“The Executive Order’s humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting. We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US,” @jack tweeted. The executive order bans immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen under measures to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out”. “I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US,” Trump said during the signing at the Pentagon after the swearing-in of Defence Secretary James Mattis.

IANS

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has no plans to run for US Presidential elections

  25 Jan 2017 , 11:45

Shelving rumours surrounding his plans to run for the US presidency, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has insisted that for now he has no such intentions, saying he would continue to work to grow his company. For now, he said he would continue working on growing his company as well as the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) – the corporation he and wife Priscilla built which makes investments in scientific and leadership research.

According to Buzzfeed, Zuckerberg responded with a “No” when he was asked if he had any plans to run for president. “I am focused on building our community at Facebook and working on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative,” he was quoted as saying on Tuesday. A source said that the Facebook founder has privately denied it as well.

“There’s absolutely no truth to the idea that Mark is running for office and I’ve heard it directly from him,” the source was quoted as saying. “Here’s the thing: For Mark, Facebook is global community that already plays this huge part in the lives of billions of people around the world and plays an incredibly important role in shaping the base on the issues that matter,” the source added.

IANS

Yahoo hacks: European Union is not satisfied with US’ explanation regarding Yahoo email scanning orders

Image: Reuters

  12 Jan 2017 , 10:45

The United States has not satisfied the European Union’s concerns about Yahoo’s scanning of all customers’ incoming emails for US intelligence purposes, the bloc’s justice chief told Reuters in an interview.

The European Commission, the EU executive, asked the United States in November for clarifications on the secret court order served to Yahoo as part of its monitoring of a new transatlantic pact facilitating the exchange of personal data by businesses.

To clinch an agreement on the EU-US Privacy Shield, as the data transfer framework is known, Washington pledged not to engage in mass, indiscriminate surveillance.

(Also Read: Yahoo is going to be renamed to Altaba following Verizon acquisition, Marissa Mayer to resign from board)

That allayed Commission concerns for the privacy of Europeans’ data stored on US servers raised by disclosures of intrusive US surveillance programmes in 2013 by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

“I am not satisfied because to my taste the answer came relatively late and relatively general, and I will make clear at the first possible opportunity to the American side that this is not how we understand good, quick and full exchange of information,” EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova said in the interview.

While Yahoo is not signed up to the Privacy Shield and the scanning took place before the framework existed, the issue is a first test case of how the new system, which underpins $260 billion of trade in digital services, and the US commitments on spying work in practice, an EU official said.

The Privacy Shield allows businesses to seamlessly move Europeans’ personal data across the Atlantic, whether for completing credit card transactions, hotel bookings or analysing browsing habits to serve targeted ads, while complying with strict EU data protection rules.

“I understand that the American side, when it comes to national security issues, cannot be fully concrete,” Jourova said.

(Also Read: Yahoo to be called ‘Altaba’; what’s in a name?)

Nevertheless, she said, she still expects more detailed information on what happened and the reasons for which Yahoo was asked to scan customer emails.

Reuters reported in October that Yahoo scanned all incoming emails for a digital signature linked to a foreign state sponsor of terrorism at the behest of an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

The Privacy Shield foresees an annual review to ensure the United States is abiding by its commitments and that the framework is effective. The first annual review will take place this summer, under now President-elect Donald Trump.

Jourova said she was not concerned by the incoming Trump administration but that she would closely monitor what he would do with the US government’s presidential policy directive on US surveillance activities and a newly established US ombudsperson office in the State Department to handle complaints from EU citizens about US spying.

“I would expect that Trump’s administration would understand what is good and what is bad for business. This is good for business,” she said, referring to the Privacy Shield.

“We need to see that we can still trust.”

Reuters

Lithuania finds spyware on its government computers, holds Kremlin responsible

Image Credit: Malwarebytes

  23 Dec 2016 , 09:48

The Baltic state of Lithuania, on the frontline of growing tensions between the West and Russia, says the Kremlin is responsible for cyber attacks that have hit government computers over the last two years.

The head of cyber security told Reuters three cases of Russian spyware on its government computers had been discovered since 2015, and there had been 20 attempts to infect them this year

“The spyware we found was operating for at least half a year before it was detected – similar to how it was in the USA,” Rimtautas Cerniauskas, head of Lithuanian Cyber Security Centre said.

The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a Reuters written request for comments over the Lithuanian claims. But Russia has in the past denied accusations of hacking Western institutions.

Fears of cyber attacks have come to the fore since the U.S. election campaign when hacking of Democratic Party emails led to allegations from U.S. intelligence that Russia was involved. Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, all ruled by Moscow in communist times, have been alarmed by Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014 and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.

In what Baltic officials say was a wake-up call, Estonia was hit by cyber attacks on extensive private and government Internet sites in 2007. State websites were brought to a crawl and an online banking site was closed. Lithuanian intelligence services, in their annual report, say cyber attacks have moved from being mainly targeted at financial crimes to more political spying on state institutions.

Russian spyware was transferring all documents it could find, as well as all passwords entered on websites such as GMail or Facebook, to an internet address commonly used by Russian spy agencies, Cerniaukas said. “This only confirms that attempts are made to infiltrate our political sphere,” said Cerniaukas.

Preparations

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency reported earlier this month a striking increase in Russian targeted cyber attacks against political parties and propaganda and disinformation campaigns aimed at destabilising German society. The domestic intelligence chief said Russia may seek to interfere in its national elections next year.

Although no Russian cyber meddling was detected in the run up and during the Lithuanian general election in October, Cerniauskas said his country needs to understand it is vulnerable to such meddling.”Russians are really quite good in this area. They have been using information warfare since the old times. Cyberspace is part of that, only more frowned upon by law than simple propaganda”, he said.

“They have capacity, they have the attitude, they are interested, and they will get to it – so we need to prepare for it and we need to apply countermeasures.” Lithuanian officials targeted by the Russian spyware held mid-to-low ranking positions at the government, but their computers contained a stream of drafts for government decisions of its positions on various matters, said Cerniauskas.

The head of the Lithuanian counter-intelligence agency Darius Jauniskis said Russia tried to sow chaos in Lithuania by orchestrating a cyber attack in 2012 against the Lithuanian central bank and its top online news website. “It is all part of psychological warfare,” he told Reuters earlier this month.

Reuters