Employees of several institutions and politicians have become targets of cyber attack - Cert.lv

RIGA - Employees of several institutions and politicians have become targets of cyber attacks in recent days, analysis by the Information Technology Security Incident Response Institution Cert.lv suggests. 

The attacks have been carried out by sending emails in the name of the Russian embassy as an answer to previous correspondence and containing a link to a document, which unleashes malware upon downloading. 

According to Cert.lv, all recipients recognized fragments from their previous correspondence that were used to gain the recipients' trust. 

Cert.lv spokeswoman Liga Besere indicated that this is at least second wave of such targeted attacks in the last three months where malware is spread through emails sent out in the name of the Russian embassy. 

In  October, the Russian embassy in Riga also released information to the media about a cyber attack targeting its email system.

In Besere's words, the attacks did not take advantage of critical vulnerabilities. Instead, the documents that were sent out for downloading to the recipients' computers contained the Macros functionality which has to be enabled by the user. 

Cert.lv advises checking the authenticity of senders' email accounts before downloading documents and avoiding enabling Macros. 

In case of similar attacks, Cert.lv asks to report them to [email protected].