When answering an emergency request, Governor Peter Kaiser (SPÖ) indirectly confirmed information from the hackers that “at least 250 gigabytes of data” had been stolen. Four fifths are data from members of the state government. Kaiser also confirmed the theft of 120 passport details.
It is assumed that the hackers retrieved above all data from government politicians and “from the scope of foreign affairs”: “When comparing the data with the list of hackers, a data volume of at least 250 GB can be assumed,” says Kaiser. 183 gigabytes (77.54 percent of the data) of the data retrieved would concern the governor’s office. Another 5.75 percent come from the other members of the government: “So more than four-fifths of the extracted data concern members of the government.”
Passport data that has surfaced comes “primarily from government employees, government employees and individual relatives,” Kaiser explained: “That has to do with the fact that they work internationally – for example in various EU bodies – or hold positions there.” According to initial surveys, 120 copies of passports are affected, and the people are “notified directly”: “95 percent of them are state employees or political representatives.”
Attack “unfortunately not an isolated case”
As in the days before, there were unsuccessful attacks on the IT system on Wednesday, Kaiser named 40,000 overload requests. The FPÖ prepared an urgent request for the meeting with 45 questions to the governor, the item on the agenda was scheduled for noon.
Kaiser explained that the attack on the state of Carinthia was “unfortunately not an isolated case”, not even the Pentagon, the US Department of Defense, was protected from hacker attacks: “Wherever people develop things, it will again be people who overcome to hack, to be able to crack.” One shouldn’t forget that this is a crime, said Kaiser, who emphasized once again that the ransom demand – the hackers are demanding five million dollars from Carinthia – will not be followed.
No insurance coverage at the moment
Kaiser didn’t want to go into detail about the actual topic of the question, which measures the country had taken against cyber attacks: “I don’t want to disclose information in public that could be used against the country.” In general, he mentioned “processes and guidelines, awareness training, infrastructure measures, as well as other measures and risk minimization”. In the current situation, the IT system is being completely rebuilt – the last attempted attacks have shown that it works.
At the moment, the state of Carinthia has no insurance cover that would cover damage caused by cyber attacks and their consequences, Kaiser stated at the request of Team Carinthia MP Hartmut Prasch: “An offer that was made two years ago was qualified as insufficient at the time, so there is no insurance at the moment.” He immediately initiated offers in this regard, said Kaiser, even if that was difficult in the IT area: “When the insurance is taken out, it is already out of date. But we will try to break new ground.”
Source: Nachrichten
