“Information published in the media about the possible compromise of tens of MIA system accounts raises serious concerns. On Monday, I invite the Minister of the Interior Vladislav Kondratovičius to provide explanations and an action plan regarding this situation,” I. Ruginienė wrote on the social network Facebook.
“I also tasked Minister Robert Kaunas, together with the head of the National Cyber Security Center, to immediately collect all information about the incident, assess how supervision was carried out, determine responsibilities and take urgent measures to prevent such cases from happening again,” she added.
According to the Prime Minister, all information that can be disclosed during the pre-trial investigation must be provided.
“All the facts must be presented, as far as the pre-trial investigation allows. Especially in this geopolitical context, state cyber security is not a formality. Inaction and any attempts to hide information must be answered,” taught I. Ruginienė.
50 employee accounts may have been hacked
According to news portal “15min”, the responsible institutions are currently investigating the circumstances of possible hacking into the accounts of employees of 50 institutions subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
At that time, V. Kondratovići said on Friday evening that he could neither confirm nor deny information about a possible much more serious incident in the information systems of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
According to the information of the portal, information about the hacking of dozens of MIA IT system accounts could have been known to the ministry’s leadership as early as May. It was also mentioned in some inter-institutional meetings.
It is suspected that in the period from January, more than 600 thousand could have been leaked from RC. extracts from the real estate register, the resulting damage amounts to at least 111 thousand euros.
According to the Data Protection Inspectorate, the number of people affected by the theft is somewhat smaller – it amounts to about 0.5 million.
The General Prosecutor’s Office opened a preliminary investigation into the incident. She announced that she started the investigation on the same day when the report about the incident was received – April 15.
The opposition of the Seimas collected the signatures needed to initiate a temporary parliamentary commission of inquiry, which should clarify the circumstances of the data theft.
Adrijus Jus, the former head of the RC who resigned at the time, said that a large-scale data leak from the registers was noticed as early as April, but the possibilities to report the incident were limited by the investigation launched by the law enforcement.
According to him, the authorities were immediately informed about the situation, including the Ministry of Economy and Innovation (EIM).
When there was indignation in the public space as to why the public was not informed about the theft of data immediately and when the opinions of politicians differed on the issue of responsibility, the General Prosecutor’s Office claimed that the RC was obliged to report the incident.
The state company itself indicated that the General Prosecutor’s Office did not prohibit residents from reporting the theft of their data. According to the RC, after receiving this response, a technical tool was being developed to inform residents.
The tool, which allows residents to check if their data has been stolen, was launched in RC on May 25 last week.
ELTA (ELTA)
