With its 12 million dollar budget and 2000 employees (compared to 170k in Russia on a 3 billion budget, or hundreds of thousands on a 60 billion budget in the US) presumably trying not to get hacked by everyone else
15m/2k=$7500/year per person. In Norway. It's not enough even for salaries.
Russia has a military. Russia uses its military to attack its neighbours and quell domestic insurgence.
Norway also have a military. Does it follow that Norway uses its military to attack its neighbours and quell domestic insurgence?
But not to get misunderstood, no I don't believe what norway is doing is on par with what russia is doing. But I never said that. I just challenged your claim:
"I really doubt Norway ever made a cyberattack on a Russian (or any other) government institution."
Because if the norwegian intelligence service never hacked any government institution then they would be very nice. But then they would be the first nice one of their kind.
Similarly, there may well be countries that have intelligence agencies and did not have to use them for offensive purposes. Those agents may be twiddling thumbs, or more likely they may be working to detect and counteract offensive actions of other countries’ intelligence agencies.
Spying is their craft.
And spying nowdays mostly involves breaching into computersystems, aka cyberattack.
The problem is the ambiguity of the word cyberattack. Because it covers passive reading of classified content (which is classic spycraft and sadly very normal in the realm of politics) as well as offensive disruptive cyberattacks, from slowing a service to physically damaging infrastructure.