Ministry of Justice of Ukraine restores damaged state registers
23 December 2024 15:16
The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has begun restoring state registries affected by a large-scale cyberattack in accordance with an agreed plan. This was announced on December 23 during a telethon by First Deputy Minister Mykola Kucheriavenko, reports
According to him, backups of all registers have been saved, and no information has been lost.
“Tomorrow, the backups will be validated, and the restoration is expected to begin according to the agreed plan. The platforms have already been formed, and we are starting to fill them with content,” the official said.
He said that the first priority is to restore the Register of Powers of Attorney, the Register of Special Forms of Notarial Documents and the Inheritance Register.
Next, experts will restore access to the State Register of Civil Status Acts, the Unified State Register, and the Register of Real Property Rights.
At the same time, the Deputy Minister stated that although the state registries of the Ministry of Justice will be restored one by one, they will work in a complex, as they are interconnected and it is better to launch them together.
Earlier, the Minister of Justice of Ukraine Olga Stefanishyna reported that the restoration of the registers would begin on Monday, December 23, and within 2 weeks they would try to fully restore the registers.
As a reminder, a large-scale failure at the level of the network infrastructure serving the state registries became known on December 19. Later, Olga Stefanishyna reported that Russia had launched a cyberattack on state registries under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice to disrupt the operation of critical infrastructure. The registries were temporarily suspended.
Why a cyberattack on state registries became possible
A large-scale cyberattack on the state registries of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine could have occurred either through phishing or bribery of employees who had access to these registries. This was reported by Oleksandr Fediyenko, chairman of the Subcommittee on Cyberspace Security, Government Communications, Cryptographic Protection of Information of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence, according to Radio Liberty. According to him, the attack was well prepared, and the login was from a top-level account.
“There may be components of recruitment of an employee of this institution, there may be a multi-level mechanism for planting a flash drive so that it passes the person’s internal perimeter and is turned on. There may be phishing of the computers of all employees who may be working in a closed loop, remotely, which is prohibited in principle. This is a well-planned cyber attack that could have been carried out given a sufficiently systematic organization,” said Oleksandr Fediyenko.
According to him, the databases were saved, so the registers can be restored.
