“The information systems and their accesses of the Register Center were accessed by simulating that it was the employees of the Migration Department connecting,” I. Gasperė told journalists on Friday.
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“At the moment, there is no data to confirm that it was specifically the employees of the Migration Department connecting or that our systems were hacked,” she said.
According to her, the hackers accessed the Register Center using the real email addresses and passwords of the department’s employees.
“(The investigation must answer – BNS) whether the employees themselves lost those passwords somewhere, or if they were obtained in some other way,” said I. Gasperė.
According to her, the investigation will also have to answer who used the Migration Department employees’ accounts and how and when it was done.
The head of the department emphasized that the institution she leads complied with the specified deadlines and reported the identified problems to the State Data Protection Inspectorate within 72 hours.
“Our Migration Department systems are secure, and every person can log into the Migration Department system and check that their data has not been stolen,” said I. Gasperė.
“We became suspicious of what was happening in our system (…) and contacted the State Data Protection Inspectorate because we thought an incident had occurred. And we contacted the Register Center earlier to clarify under what circumstances our employees connect to the Real Estate Register,” she said.
According to Interior Minister Vladislavas Kondratovičius, the data theft from the RC was revealed when a citizen began to inquire why the Migration Department was interested in his property.
Ultimately, this led to the renewal of all department employees’ accesses to the RC.
“For the first time in my practice, it was decided (– BNS) to renew all accesses,” said I. Gasperė.
According to V. Kondratovičius, the login data of two Migration Department employees was stolen. I. Gasperė said she could not confirm this information until the investigation is completed.
“This is a lesson for all of us that it is very important to protect your login name and password, and that it costs a lot,” said the head of the Migration Department.
No department employee is currently suspended from duties.
As BNS wrote, the General Prosecutor’s Office is investigating possible illegal logins and the theft of more than 600,000 real estate register entries, including people’s personal identification numbers.
According to law enforcement, the logins were made from abroad, using the accounts of Migration Department employees.
Preliminary data indicates the thefts were carried out earlier this year, and the data theft was noticed in early April.
Among the affected persons are President Gitanas Nausėda, military commander Raimundas Vaikšnoras, some ministers, members of parliament, and businessmen.
Due to the large-scale data theft, the head of the RC, Adrijus Jusas, resigned.
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