The Montenegrin government has provided detailed information about the attack on critical computer infrastructure – it turned out that the systems were attacked by a ransomware virus.
The Minister of Public Administration of Montenegro, Maras Dukaj, stressed that an organized crime group was behind the attack. Specialists have not been able to restore government systems for 10 days. The hackers requested a ransom of $10 million in cryptocurrencies for decrypting the files, but it is not reported which coins the attackers require.
Interestingly, the Montenegrin government initially announced a “Russian trace” in hacking computer systems. This gave the attack a political dimension, and it seems that Montenegrin officials hoped that NATO allies would help the country deal with the consequences of the hack.
However, one of Cuba’s hacker groups claimed responsibility for the hack. They published on their website some documents of the Parliament of Montenegro, and also stated that they had access to financial documents of the government, including correspondence with banks, invoices, tax documents, payrolls and even the source code of information systems.
Dukai has not yet announced whether the Montenegrin government will pay the ransom or try to figure it out on its own. He noted that it is not yet known when the work of government computer systems will be restored.
Earlier it was reported that since the beginning of the year, hackers have stolen assets worth $1.9 billion from various cryptocurrency projects.
Source: Bits
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