Norway sends China to the cleaners for hacking its Parliament; summons envoy, warns Xi

Norway's PM Ine Eriksen Soreide on July 21 stated that her government had summoned China's Ambassador to Norway in relation to China's alleged IT attack on the Norwegian Parliament. Earlier this month, Norway formally attributed the hacking of its email accounts associated with the country’s Parliament to Chinese hackers participating in the exploitation of vulnerabilities on Microsoft’s Exchange Server.

On March 10, a statement from the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Ministry said the Storting (Norwegian Parliament) had revealed that its email systems had been fiddled with and compromised stating that the attackers exploited security susceptibilities in Microsoft Exchange software. 

Citing Norway's PM Soreide, the statement read, "All cyber operations leave different forms of traces and then it is among other things, our security services that make assessments of that and compile the information. And on the basis of this information, the government has made an assessment that the attack originated from China."

Supplementing the revelation, PM Soreide said that it was a very serious incident potentially affecting Norway's utmost important democratic institution (Storting).

"We expect China to take this issue seriously, and to ensure that such incidents are not repeated," Soreide said, sternly directing the Xi Jinping-led regime to look into the menace.

The Norwegian Foreign Minister had also confirmed that the Storting was a victim of cyber exploitation and added that the Chinese Embassy had been contacted in order to 'raise the issue directly'. 

She had said, “Allowing such malicious cyber activities to take place is in contradiction to the norms of responsible state behaviour endorsed by all UN Member States. Today, we have called in the Chinese Embassy and raised the issue directly.”

US, EU & Australia on Microsoft Exchange hack

In March 2021, Chinese hackers purportedly attacked Australia's Western parliamentary email network as well, this was part of a massive global cyberattack involving Microsoft software. The online strike was detected on March 4 in the middle of the state election campaign and prompted intervention from Australia's cybersecurity watchdog in Canberra. Meanwhile, Microsoft said that the flaw was being used by a Chinese state-sponsored hacking group to target a variety of organisations.

The Norwegian government blaming the China-based hackers came just a day after the United States along with its western allies formally blamed China for a massive hack of the Microsoft Exchange email server software. The officials also emphasised the criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations. However, the announcements were not accompanied by sanctions against the Chinese government. The move underlined the ongoing threat from Chinese hackers despite US President Joe Biden's administration being on constant alert of ransomware attacks based in Russia. 

In a statement, the EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said that the hacking was 'conducted from the territory of China for the purpose of intellectual property theft and espionage'. Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the Microsoft Exchange cyber attack 'by Chinese state-backed groups was a reckless but familiar pattern of behaviour'. 

Also, in the first public condemnation of China, NATO had called on Beijing to adhere to international commitments and obligations 'and to act responsibly in the international system, including the cyberspace'.