The Vilnius District Municipality was hit by a cyber attack earlier this week when criminals encrypted its data, including the latest backup copies, but some systems have since been restored, the National Cyber Security Center said on Friday.
NCSC specialists are providing assistance and collecting the necessary material for further investigation.
“We consider the situation to be complex,” it told BNS. “According to the initial data of the NCSC, the information systems were encrypted using data-encrypting malware (ransomware), and the criminals also encrypted the most recent backup copies.”
However, “specialists have already managed to restore several systems”, the center said.
Earlier this week, the Vilnius District Municipality said services might be disrupted in the near future due to a systems failure.
Earlier in the day, Kaunas University of Technology (KTU) said it had been hit by a similar cyber attack. The NCSC is actively cooperating with KTU but says it has no information to suggest that the two attacks are linked.
The NCSC says data-encrypting malware is a widespread type of malicious code whose main purpose is to encrypt data or systems on a device and demand a ransom for decryption.
In many cases, criminals will also misappropriate the information on the device before encrypting it and then make it public or use it to launch other attacks.
To protect against such attacks, the NCSC says it is essential to regularly back up data, keep it separate from the network and regularly check that they can be used to restore data.
Source: BNS
(Reproduction of BNS information in mass media and other websites without written consent of BNS is prohibited.)