A group of cyber spies tried to hack into the Dutch Safety Board website, possibly to try to gain information about the MH17 investigation, news site Nu.nl says on Friday.

The hackers may be a Russian team known as ‘Operation Pawn Storm’, the safety board told Nu.nl. The attack was not successful and the council declined to give any more information.

Operation Pawn Storm is being monitored by internet security company Trend Micro, which says the board was the ‘target of the cyber-espionage operation before and after’ it published the detailed report on the shooting down of MH17 on October 13.

The hack involved setting up fake servers and phishing attacks ‘in order to collect credentials from personnel… which could give Pawn Storm unauthorised access’ to the real servers, Trend Micro said.

‘Operation Pawn Storm is an ongoing cyber espionage campaign that’s as far-reaching as it is ambitious,’ Trend Micro says. ‘It has been known to target organisations and government institutions such as Nato and the White House, and has been found targeting high-profile political personalities in Ukraine and Russia.’