Largest cyberattack on Ukraine’s state registers: Ministry of Justice systems shut down
Pravda Ukraine
Ukraine has experienced the largest cyberattack on government registries in recent times. The operation of key Ministry of Justice systems has been temporarily suspended as a result of the attack conducted by Russian hackers. The hackers claimed to have destroyed all data they gained access to, including backup copies stored on servers in Poland.
Source: Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration and Minister of Justice; statement by Russian hackers
Details: Stefanishyna said the cyberattack had led to the temporary suspension of the operation of the Unified and State Registries under the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. It has been determined that the attack was organised by Russian hackers with the goal of disrupting the functioning of key government services.
Quote from Stefanishyna: “Right now, along with the team and specialists from other services, we are coordinating efforts to counter the cyberattack and restore the systems. It is already clear that the attack was conducted by the Russians to disrupt the operation of critical state infrastructure.”
Details: The hackers claimed to have stolen and deleted over a billion lines of data, including data stored in Poland.
Stefanishyna reported that the following will be restored first:
- the State Register of Civil Status Acts of citizens;
- the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Private Entrepreneurs;
- the State Register of Real Property Rights and Encumbrances.
The estimated time for the first phase of restoration will be up to two weeks. “Details on providing services to citizens will be available tomorrow throughout the day,” Stefanishyna reported. “We are keeping the situation under control and doing everything necessary for the prompt restoration of all services,” she added.
Context: Mykhailo Fedorov, Deputy Prime Minister for Innovation, Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, believes that the role of cybersecurity in the modern world is often exaggerated. “There is a lot of talk about it, but few can present real cases of cyber threats in reality,” Fedorov said in 2019.
“When we arrived at the President’s Office, the IT team showed us dashboards with a thousand attacks per day, site overloads, etc. We fired them [workers] within two weeks and nothing happened for several months while we gathered a new team,” he added.
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