14 DAY TRIAL // Operation Pawn Storm is a campaign of inter-linked attacks attributed to a group of hackers that Trend Micro has previously dubbed Sednit, group that, even if not officially linked to Russia's government, is mysteriously and constantly attacking targets that the Kremlin government has "issues" with.
The two most recent Operation Pawn Storm victims are the Dutch Safety Board (Onderzoeksraad) and parties involved in the Syrian War.
Hackers attack Dutch Safety Board because of flight MH17 crash report
According to Trend Micro, on October 14, the company observed a spike of activity coming from Sednit's hackers, all aimed at the Dutch Safety Board's private VPN and SFTP servers.
Coincidentally, a day prior, on October 13, the Dutch Safety Board released its final report on the crash of flight MH17, the Malaysia Airlines plane that crashed in the Ukraine on July 17.
The report clearly put the blame for the crash on a military missile fired at the aircraft. The airplane was shot down in an area controlled by the Donbass People's Militia, unofficially supported by the Kremlin government, with both troops and military equipment.
To give some context to why Russia may have had something to hide, in July 2015, Malaysia asked the UN to set up an international tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of the attack. The UN Security Council voted positively for this request, but Russia vetoed the proposal in the end.
Besides the direct cyber-attacks on the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) servers, Trend Micro also recorded some failed phishing attempts on an Outlook Web Access (OWA) server under the control of a DSB partner.
Pawn Storm now targets parties involved in the Syrian Civil War
The other players targeted in recent Operation Pawn Storm attacks are people and agencies that criticized Russia's involvement in the Syrian war.
Trend Micro reports that it tracked attacks against Syrian opposition group members in exile, but also defense and diplomatic agencies for any Arab country that spoke against Russia's recent attacks on ISIS members and support of the al-Assad regime.
We're not going to spell out our conclusions for you. We believe Softpedia's readers are smart enough to see through the reports and evidence by themselves.