Swedish politicians are subjected to a Chinese hacking attack

The indictment, which was followed by sanctions from US and British authorities, targeted companies and individuals with links to the Chinese hacker group APT31, which is said to be part of the Chinese state apparatus, Reuters reported.

The list of victims – believed to number several million – includes US senators, members of the British Parliament, and European members of the so-called Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC).

The email looked like a newsletter

Elisabet Lahn, a Christian Democratic municipal councilor in Gothenburg, is one of the vulnerable members of IPAC. She says she learned this week that a seemingly innocent email that arrived in inboxes in 2021 turned out to be from APT31. It looked like a newsletter and I opened it.

– The email doesn't seem to contain any false information or anything, it just seems fairly normal – like spam or something.

The hacker group may have received information about, among other things, the geographic location of the IP address.

– It was a type of attack where they could access information about where you are, the network you are connected to, the device you are using, and the browser you are using. Then, in the next step, they could choose to attack that network, which to my knowledge had not happened at the time.

MP Joar Forssell (left), also a member of IPAC, was also affected. Expressen writes.

He told the newspaper: “I did not know this until I read the press release issued by the American authorities.”

Finland has been hit hard in 2021

In 2021, APT31 carried out large-scale cyberattacks against Finnish authorities, successfully penetrating the parliament's IT system, according to the Associated Press news agency. The previous year, the email accounts of several members of the Finnish Parliament were attacked by APT31.