Think tanks both in the US and elsewhere continue to be big targets for cyber attackers trying to steal information or influence election outcomes.
Here is more from Reuters:
Two foundations tied to Germany’s ruling coalition parties were attacked by the same cyber spy group that targeted the campaign of French presidential favorite Emmanuel Macron, a leading cyber security expert said on Tuesday.
The group, dubbed "Pawn Storm" by security firm Trend Micro, used email phishing tricks and attempted to install malware at think tanks tied to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party and coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Feike Hacquebord said.
Hacquebord and other experts said the attacks, which took place in March and April, suggest Pawn Storm is seeking to influence the national elections in the two European Union powerhouses.
Pawn Storm set up a fake computer server located based in Germany at kasapp.de to mount email phishing attacks against the CDU party's Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) and a server located in the Ukraine at intern-fes.de to target the SPD's Friedrich Ebert Foundation (FES).
As Think Tank Watch has widely documented, cyber attacks on think tanks are becoming more prevalent, and nearly every major think tank has faced multiple attacks.
