As the director of the Lithuanian National Cyber Security Center Rītis Rainis later pointed out, at least 19 websites, including the four already mentioned, have been attacked on Wednesday evening. Municipal sites have been the main victims. Although the attacks varied in content, they were clearly coordinated.
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Complex cyber-attacks using vulnerabilities in a single vendor’s content management system due to poor password management
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hacking websites and posting fake messages on them.
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Experts have been able to trace the origin of the attacks and, once the material has been collected, it will be passed on to law enforcement or public intelligence.
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“We have worked quite refined and invested a lot of work. This activity is obviously not dilettante, but systematic and coordinated.
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The aim was to disseminate false information so that it looked credible and reached as many users as possible. “
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He confirmed that all the affected institutions had used a “one fairly large producer” content management system used by both hundreds of public and private institutions. This supplier was ready to work with experts to ensure the future security of the system, and this shortcoming has already been remedied.
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“I think it will be classified as a criminal offense and it will be dealt with by cyber police. If it is an activity of other countries, then our information will be received by intelligence organizations, which will continue to do their job,” said the head of the National Cyber Security Center.
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According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday, the information that “the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has submitted a note to the Polish Embassy in Lithuania is not true”.
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“Contacting other responsible Lithuanian institutions, we have concluded that this is a complex cyber attack and information attack,” the ministry said, noting that such attacks have recently intensified to “intensify friendly relations between Lithuania and Poland and unite the Lithuanian and Polish peoples.” .
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A Polish diplomat from the Polish embassy in Lithuania who carried drugs, weapons and money was detained at the Lithuanian-Polish border on a Wednesday night on the website of the State Border Guard Service and a note was submitted to the embassy. VSAT representative Ģiedrjus Mišutis told the BNS news agency that such information was posted on the website while illegally connecting to the system and removed on Thursday morning.
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The Ministry of Defense, for its part, called the invitations to appear in the regional military units of the Armed Forces false information, stating that the military service “had not instructed local governments, educational or other institutions or conscripts to conduct conscription procedures or visit regional military centers on December 10”.
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It emphasized that the conscription into the Armed Forces had ended on December 7 this year, and in order to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, young people had been invited to submit their data remotely for a month.
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The Ministry has called for following official information and reporting similar cases of dissemination of false information.
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The website of Siauliai municipality was also hacked on Wednesday evening, the mayor of Siauliai Artūrs Visocks has confirmed to the agency.
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“The fake message was about the airport, about our efforts at the airport. The attack was quite clever, the message could not be copied, only the screenshot was taken,” he said, adding that the message appeared on the site in the evening and was deleted very soon. only a few people could read it.
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The director of the National Cyber Security Center has acknowledged that this latest attack has been different from similar incidents this year and last, in which the same false message was spread, but this time different content was spread at the same time.
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According to him, recommendations regarding the specific security problem have been provided to local governments in advance and have also been received by Siauliai Municipality, which had experienced the attack a month ago.
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“Apparently it was abandoned by hand, believing that there was no need to act until one nice day someone decided to use it,” Rainis added.
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Analysts of the Strategic Communication Department of the Lithuanian Armed Forces have recently observed a more active spread of negative and misleading information in the public space and social networks.
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In September, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry warned that a false message had been spread on its behalf that Minister Lin Linkevich was calling for a “peacekeeping force” to be sent to Belarus.
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