Albania: The government was subjected to a "massive cyber attack"

The government in Albania accepted "massive cyber attack", resulting in its websites being offline.

In a statement released to local news media, the government said a "attack from abroad". The press release continued: "To not allow this attack to harm IT system our, the National Agency of Information Society had temporarily shut down online services and other government websites“.

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The Albanian Government also stressed that all the data citizens stored on its website are "secure and intact". As he explained, it was "complex and large-scale attack" but, "the isolation of government infrastructure and systems was carried out to guarantee data protection“.

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According to the statement, "the rapid detection and response to these attacks allowed cyber systems to emerge intact. These systems have all back-up and are safe“.

However, the government in Albania made no mention of who may have been behind the cyber attack. It simply said that "the methods used by these malicious actors are similar to last year's attacks observed internationally. The techniques on which this attack is based are of the same nature as those used for some recent cyber attacks in government and private sectors, such as in Ukraine, Germany, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, Malta, Belgium and other countries. These methods initially appear as attacks Ransomware, with which criminals seek to distract attention from the real target, which is the attack on critical systems. The second step of this concentrated and sophisticated attack is the attack on the critical digital systems of the Albanian state to disable them“.

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Η NetBlocks, which monitors Internet outages around the world, tweeted that the service was first cut off on Saturday night, around 21:00 local time. He said: "Confirmed: # Albania's National Agency of Information Society (AKSHI) network has been temporarily shut down to deal with a major cyber attack. Real-time network data shows that the service has been down for hours since Saturday night, affecting online government services“.

The Albanian government said it had cooperated with experts from the Microsoft and the Jones Group International to address the situation "and the return to normality“.

Some local media reported that the Russia could be behind the attack. Ο Oliver Pinson-Roxburgh, Managing Director of Defense.com, he commented: "The large-scale cyber-attack that affected the Albanian government's digital services shows all that is at stake in our digital and connected world. While we have seen independent groups hacking to target the IT infrastructure of states in the past, it is unusual for a stand-alone group to be able to operate on this scale. The state hackers, on the other hand, they certainly have the potential to target and disrupt the digital operations of other countries. Given that the purpose of this incident appears to have been disruption, rather than financial gain, a state actor appears to be the most likely culprit for this attack“.

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However, the Todd Carroll, CISO at CybelAngel, believes that the Albanian government could be a tempting target for many threat actors: "Albania has always had a problem with data security, which is exacerbated by the excessive collection of data on its citizens...“.

In December 2021, the Albanian Prime Minister issued a public apology after the alleged leak of personal information about the data of hundreds of thousands of Albanian citizens in the Internet.

Source : www.infosecurity-magazine.com