Three Estonian government ministries have been the target of cyberattacks and data theft in the past few months, the country's information authority said last Tuesday.
The Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) said that the attacks on the Foreign, Economy and Social Affairs ministries shared similarities. In each case, the web servers had been targeted.
The security gaps have meanwhile been closed, it said, and the situation is now under control. Police are investigating.
The director of cybersecurity at RIA, Lauri Aasmann, spoke of an "extremely serious" security breach: Data from more than 9,000 people was stolen from the Social Affairs Ministry, while a database with publicly available information was copied from the Foreign Ministry. The Economy Ministry was most affected.
"Now that the initial mitigation efforts are done, we need to work together all across the country to keep such attacks from being successful," said Raul Rikk, head of cybersecurity policy at the Baltic nation's Economy Ministry.
