Greece's Land Registry department was penetrated in a wave of 400 cyberattacks.

 The Land Registry department in Greece has announced a limited-scope data breach as a result of 400 cyberattacks on its IT infrastructure over the last week.

The agency stated that hackers were able to access employee terminals and take 1.2 GB of data, accounting for approximately 0.0006% of the total data kept by the government body.

The stolen material apparently does not contain any personal information on residents, but rather consists mostly of standard administrative records, the disclosure of which is unlikely to have an influence on the registry's operations.

According to the release, the hackers attempted to create a rogue account in order to gain access to the agency's core database, but were unsuccessful.

The unauthorized actors accessed one of the database's backups, which are updated daily. However, the subsequent attempt to exfiltrate the data to an external server was denied.

The Land Registry's internal investigation, assisted by the Cybersecurity Directorate of the General Staff of National Defense, revealed no indication of ransomware being installed on the compromised systems.

Emergency measures to decrease the risk of ransomware have been implemented, such as disconnecting all VPN connectivity to block rogue individuals.

As a precaution, all registry employees' passwords have been reset, and two-factor authentication is now required to help secure their accounts against illegal access.

The last reported attempt took place in the early hours of July 19, 2024, and was successfully foiled. No additional updates have been released, thus it is unknown whether the attacks will continue.

Currently, the agency's digital services are operating normally, and transactions with residents, which are regarded safe, have been uninterrupted throughout the attacks.

In 2022, Greece's state-owned postal service provider, ELTA, was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted service across the country.

A few months later, the Ragnar Locker ransomware infected the country's major natural gas distributor, DESFA, corrupting data and triggering an IT system outage.

Source: BleepingComputer

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