MOSCOW, November 8 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s Kaspersky Lab anti-virus software firm reported on Thursday “targeted attacks” on the websites of some of Russia’s major media outlets.
The Lab said it had detected the Lurk virus attack in late October on the websites of Vesti TV, Interfax news agency, Gazeta.ru, Vzglyad and Ura.ru online publications, programmed to steal FTP server passwords.
The attacks lasted between 30 and 90 minutes every day, exposing about 1,500 users to the risk of infection.
The administrators of all the web resources have already taken appropriate measures, the lab said. On Thursday morning only, the Interfax website experienced some technical problems for several hours but normal operation was later restored, Kaspersky said.
Kaspersky Lab reported a similar attack in March this year, when hackers targeted the RIA Novosti and Gazeta.ru websites.
Prior to that, in November 2011, hackers attacked Interfax, Express-Gazeta, Svobodnaya Pressa, Komsomolskaya Pravda and other media websites.
Kaspersky Lab said in mid-October it is developing a new operating system for industrial users to protect them from malware attacks.
Modern industrial systems have recently come under damaging virus attacks, including the Stuxnet worm attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, the Duqu malware intended to steal data from protected computers, and also the Flame and Gauss cyberweapons, Kaspersky said, adding more serious threats should be expected in the future.