Data was obtained from payments made to the directorate over the past 18 years.
Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told journalists that he could not rule out the possibility that this could have been a cyberattack by another country against Latvia, as the specific attacker is not yet known.
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V. Teivans said the incident occurred on the night of August 8, but the CSDD agency “Cert.lv” was only informed about it on the evening of August 10, i.e. Monday, which can be explained by the fact that the incident happened over the weekend.
He noted that the cyberattack was carried out by exploiting a vulnerability in the CSDD information system accessible via the internet, which had not been fixed and, based on available information, had not been detected before.
Among the stolen records, among other things, are the personal codes of payers or company registration numbers, first and last names or company names, payment amounts, payment dates, vehicle registration numbers, and addresses registered on the day of service receipt.
“No payment information, such as bank accounts or other data that could pose a direct threat or cause financial losses to the public, has been found to be leaked, but there may be some risk if this information falls into the hands of a hacker,” added V. Teivans.
Meanwhile, A. Kulbergs emphasized that this is already the second serious attack in the past two months – the first was a cyberattack against the state forest administration in June.
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However, according to him, there is one very significant difference between the attack on the forest administration and the attack on the CSDD: in the case of the CSDD, the intruder or intruders did not reveal their identity, and the stolen information was not published anywhere.
“Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that this attack is a hybrid attack – an operation carried out by another country hostile to us,” said the prime minister.
He said that Latvian authorities are actively investigating this case.
“This can most likely be classified as an attack on critical infrastructure of special importance to our country,” said A. Kulbergs.
It is warned that the stolen information may be used by fraudsters, so residents are urged to carefully evaluate received messages and pay attention not only to their content but also to the quality of language and spelling, especially the accuracy of personal names, addresses, and other data.
Citizens are also urged not to click on any links provided in such messages or emails.
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