Nato is investigating the data breach

Nato assesses the impact of a data breach of classified military documents sold by an online hacker group.

The data included blueprints of weapons used by Nato allies in the Ukraine conflict. The hackers are selling the dossiers after stealing data linked to a major European weapons maker MBDA Missile Systems. The pan-European company admitted its data was among the stash but claimed none of the classified files belonged to the firm. 

MBDA Missile System has headquarters in France. The company said its information was hacked from a compromised external hard drive. It added that it cooperated with authorities in Italy, where the data breach occurred.

These cybercriminals are operating on English and Russian forums. They are selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoin, which is approximately £18,000. They claimed to have sold the stash to at least one unknown buyer so far. The hackers claimed to have design documentation, presentation, photos materials, videos and drawings, correspondence and contract with other companies and "classified information about employees of companies that took part in the development of closed military projects" in their advert for stolen data. A free 50MB sample of data with hackers includes documents labeled "NATO RESTRICTED," "Unclassified Controlled Information," and "NATO CONFIDENTIAL."