Prague, Feb 1 (CTK) – The cyber attack on the Czech Foreign Affairs Ministry lasted at least one year and the hackers stole more than 7,000 documents, including sensitive information, the Info.cz server wrote on Wednesday, referring to a report of the national centre for cyber security.
The server writes that 168 e-mail accounts were hacked and the attackers spent the longest time on the central account, from which incoming messages are assigned to individual participants, and the accounts of Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek, Deputy Foreign Minister Ivo Sramek and former deputy ministers Petr Drulak and Jakub Kulhanek. The accounts were mostly hacked between 06:00 at 07:00 CET.
According to the cyber-security centre’s report, those who gained the data can have a strategical advantage over the Czech Republic. Among others, the data can be used to attack Czech institutions and foreign partners and they may weaken the Czech position in negotiations, the server writes.
It writes that the hackers stole reports from diplomatic missions and information on talks of the EU military committee.
The national centre for cyber security is part of the National Security Office (NBU). NBU chief Jiri Lang said on Wednesday that the report will be presented at the next cabinet meeting, probably in a confidential regime. He said the report will summarize the findings about the hacking attack and recommends steps that state bodies should take with regard to similar threats.
The Foreign Ministry monitored the activities of hackers in its system from the beginning of January.
Minister Zaoralek said on January 31 that experts believe that another country must be behind the attack. He said it seems similar to the cyber attack on the U.S. Democrats.
The U.S. intelligence services accused Russia of the hacking.
Zaoralek said the internal system of the Foreign Ministry, which includes classified information, was not hacked.
The Neovlivni.cz news server writes that the IP addresses from which the hackers downloaded the ministry’s data are from Russia, Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. Thirty addresses have links to the suspected participants in the attack on the U.S. Democrats. However, this does not prove that Russia is behind the attack on the Foreign Ministry, the server writes.
Moscow dismissed the suspicion that Russia launched a cyber attack on the ministry, the Russian news agency TASS writes on Wednesday.
