Over the last few days, there have been hundreds of attempts to hack Latvian websites, but none of these cyber-attack attempts have been successful. Latvian Radio obtained this information from CERT.lv, the cyber incident response centre.
Last week, in Latvia and in many parts of the world, a large number of government, local authority and private sector websites were taken offline due to cyber security risks. Website administrators had to update them urgently.
Around five websites of public importance are still down, such as “rindapiearsta.lv”, which lists medical facilities providing state-funded healthcare services and indicates where these can be accessed most quickly.
The “Rīgas siltums” website is also down, as is the Latvian Radio website, according to CERT.lv, which concluded that the vast majority of websites important to the public that had been taken offline are now accessible again. However, the organisation states that a large proportion of websites are still inaccessible from abroad, but it is likely that on Monday, 26 October, they will gradually become accessible again.
Varis Teivāns, Deputy Head of CERT.lv, emphasised that no website has been hacked so far.
Teivāns said: “There is noticeable activity, but it is not on an extraordinary scale. This could be explained by the fact that, in order to successfully exploit this vulnerability, an attacker still needs quite specific knowledge both of the process itself – how to exploit the vulnerability – and of the target system.”
“If we choose to attack, for example, ‘Likumi.lv’, then we need to know the specifics of the system maintained by ‘Likumi.lv’ in order to successfully exploit its vulnerability. This actually works in favour of infrastructure defenders at the moment, as the attackers who are now visible on a large scale are most likely opportunists rather than professionals,” explained Teivāns.
In Teivāns’ view, state authorities have coped very well, although they are still in the process of restoring their systems. The risk was high – critical data could have been lost.
Teivāns said: “I don’t want to say that money is the solution to everything. Undoubtedly, there are situations where a lack of financial resources, or an inability to secure them, is the reason why something has become outdated or why there are other problems with the systems. A great deal can be resolved simply by planning the work properly and taking the right action. There are certain systems where, of course, we can now conclude that they were not maintained to the standard required by today’s cyber security challenges. But this incident… In fact, it isn’t really an incident, but our process of preventing an incident has spurred a great many people into action, and that is a good thing.”
Last week, CERT.lv reported that around 6,000 websites could be vulnerable due to software issues. CERT.lv says that, to date, dozens of private-sector website operators have also approached them for assistance.
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