Steve Marcus / Reuters
The hackers who targeted the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics appear to be back at it. Researchers at Kaspersky Lab say a group using similar tactics as those used in the so-called Olympic Destroyer attack from February is now targeting organizations that respond to and protect against biological- and chemical-weapon threats. The Olympic Destroyer attack shut down the Games’ official website and gained infamy for its use of false flags to hide the hackers’ identities, trying to frame Russia and North Korea. The group appears to have attempted to gain access to computers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Ukraine and participants in a conference organized by Spiez Laboratory, a Swiss testing company that was involved in the investigation of the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal in Britain in March. There are fears these preliminary hacking attacks may escalate in the same way the Olympic Destroyer hack did. “We’re pretty confident this is the same group,” said Kaspersky security researcher Kurt Baumgartner. “We’re saying the same sort of tactics. We’re seeing targeting that may line up with the previous group. We’re seeing multiple places where there may be crossover.”