European Commission announces that it was hit by targeted attack, as cyber espionage campaign continues - 24th Mar 2011

The European Commission was hacked into yesterday just hours before a summit of EU leaders debating the military campaign in Libya, the Euro debt crisis and nuclear safety.

A spokesperson for the EC told AFP that all staff were warned that remote access to emails was no longer operational. They also confirmed that pages from European Union websites, notably those from the European External Action Service, which handles diplomatic relations for the 27 EU states around the world, were also closed down.

A commission spokesman Antony Gravili was unable to say whether police had been called in, saying only that an ‘in-house security team' was probing. He blamed the ‘serious attack' on malware rather than any attempt to unearth secret documents relating to summit issues. “I have no information at all linking the attack to the summit, we don't only suffer attacks at these times,” he said. Read More