International authorities investigating the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 faced a series of cyberattacks from hackers seeking to infiltrate their systems.

The Asian hacking group known as Naikon has been deemed responsible for attacking multiple Malaysian government agencies within four days of the plane’s disappearance on March 8, 2014.

The cyberattacks hit military, police and civilian aviation units, as well as political offices, according to Costin Raiu of security firm Kaspersky Lab.

“Following the disappearance of MH370, we noticed a spike in the attacks by Naikon,” Raiu reportedly told a conference held in Singapore last week.

The purpose of the attacks was not just to gather information about the plane’s disappearance, but also to collect information from the international partners involved in the investigations.

“Its purpose was to get intelligence from the countries which were involved in the search,” Raiu said.

The flight’s disappearance has stumped experts and generated global interest, but the subsequent hacks were not made public.

Hackers targeting government agencies frequently use world events as the basis for sophisticated phishing campaigns.

In this case, Naikon hackers sent hundreds of thousands of legitimate-looking emails to parties involved in the search with a malicious Word document attached, according to Kaspersky Labs.

Ray claimed that the hackers were able to breach the defenses of “very high-profile institutions in several countries” as a result of their campaign. He did not identify the victims or say whether data was stolen as a result.（Elise Viebeck）