According to researchers at the security firm Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ:$SYMC), advanced hackers have targeted key companies in the United States and European energy sectors in a cyber espionage campaign to gain access to the companies’ core operating systems.

In a report published on Wednesday, Symantec stated that malicious email campaigns have been used to gain entry into organizations in the United States, Turkey and Switzerland.

The attacks had begun in late 2015, but only increased in magnitude in April of this year. Eric Chien at Symantec speculated that the work may be of a foreign government, bearing the hallmarks of a hacking group known as Dragonfly.

To further exacerbate concerns, the hacking espionage of industrial firms including power providers and other utilities, could be leveraged for destructive purposes in the event of a major geopolitical conflict.

Chien believes that the U.S. government issued warnings regarding a hacking campaign targeting the nuclear and energy sectors in June was most likely the same campaign Symantec has been tracking. In fact, a handful of the targeted companies, including those in the United States, had already been compromised on the operational level.

While Symantec did not name Russia specifically in its report, it did note that the attackers used code strings that were in Russian. The other used was French.

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