It was from a user whose account doesn’t seem to exist (probably a bot/scammer or something) but the odd part about it is that the message window doesn’t open properly on desktop or mobile? Which gives me a red flag that it was probably a hack attempt? I’d flag them as spam if there was a button for it that loaded, but it seems like the only option is to open the message, which is obviously bad news if it was indeed malicious code.

New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/geneva-dutch-ousted-russians-for-alleged-attempt-to-hack-swiss-lab/170276/

GENEVA | Dutch ousted Russians for alleged attempt to hack Swiss lab

GENEVA — Dutch authorities arrested and expelled two suspected Russian spies months ago for allegedly trying to hack a Swiss laboratory that conducts chemical weapons tests, Switzerland’s government confirmed Friday as it summoned the Russian ambassador to protest an “attempted attack.”

Moscow quickly rejected the accusation, the latest Western claim about Russian spying and other acts of interference. This time, the alleged target was the Spiez Laboratory, which analyzed samples from the March poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England.

The Swiss confirmation came after Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad and Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger reported that two Russians suspected of being agents of military intelligence service GRU were kicked out of the Netherlands earlier this year as a result of a Europe-wide investigation.

Tages-Anzeiger said the two men were arrested in The Hague during the spring, but the exact location and timing were unclear.

Switzerland’s Federal Intelligence Service did not provide details, but said Friday it worked “actively” with British and Dutch partners on the case.

“The Swiss authorities are aware of the case of Russian spies discovered in The Hague and expelled from the same place,” FIS spokeswoman Isabelle Graber said in an email. She said the agency helped prevent “illegal actions against a critical Swiss infrastructure,” and declined further comment.

The Swiss attorney general’s office said “two individuals” involved in the alleged hacking emerged during a broader investigation of alleged “political espionage” that was opened in March 2017.

Switzerland’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Russia’s ambassador to “protest against this attempted attack” and demanded that Russia “immediately” end its spying activities on Swiss soil.

But Russia’s top diplomat scoffed at the time it took for the case to come to public light.

“I cannot suppose that such an occurrence, in which the specialists of three Western countries participated, could remain out of the field of view of the mass media,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters after meeting with his German counterpart in Berlin, Russian news agencies said.

The Russian state news agency Tass quoted Stanislav Smirnov, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Switzerland, as calling the Dutch news report “absurd.”

“We believe that this is a new anti-Russian bogus story made up by the Western media,” Smirnov was quoted as saying. “It is absurd, just new groundless allegations.”

The Dutch Defense Ministry declined to comment.

In March, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced that the Netherlands had expelled two Russian intelligence agents. The action came amid a wave of Western nations ejecting Russian diplomats to protest the poisoning of the Skripals.

Spiez Laboratory spokesman Andreas Bucher declined to comment on the events in the Netherlands, but said the lab had taken precautions and no data was lost.

“We have had indications that we have been in the crosshairs of hackers in the last few months,” he said.

Bucher declined to say if the lab analyzed samples linked to the Skripal case, saying it was “contractually bound” to confidentiality in its work with the U.N.-supported Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The chemical weapons watchdog has been involved in investigating the England poisoning and is based in The Hague.

Lavrov said earlier this year that the Spiez lab had analyzed samples from the case.

Typos thwart $1 billion Bangladesh account hack attempt

DHAKA: Hackers who allegedly infiltrated the Bangladesh central bank were attempting to steal almost $1 billion from an account it held with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, but typos thwarted the full heist, officials said Friday.

The hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh’s foreign exchange account on February 5, according to officials from Bangladesh Bank, the central bank, and…

Apparently someone in Chenzhou, Hunan, China tried to hack into my Google account. Thankfully it was averted, but the strangest thing is that I don't really use that account at all, besides being my main non-school/work Google account.

I've been using it recently for my secret project (which has been progressing along nicely!)