From the failed state to the vulnerable state: the Chamber of Deputies, powerless in the face of cyber attacks

The state institutions are on the alert after finding out the vulnerability of the Parliament in the face of cyber attacks, attacks which, at the beginning of this week, managed to break the databases of the Chamber of Deputies and copy 316 files, among which were personal data of parliamentarians, including contracts or medical records.

Following the attack, the hackers posted some of the documents on the Internet, including the identity card of Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Because of this, the head of the Government announced yesterday that he will request the issuance of a new identity card, an action that other fellow deputies whose documents were accessed following the cyber attack will also do.

Marcel Ciolacu said: "I'm going to change my report card. I hope you haven't taken out any loans so far. This is not the first time we are dealing with these cyber attacks. At one point, a president of the Chamber of Deputies decided that the General Secretariat of the Chamber of Deputies should not enter a certain program, so that STS and SRI would also be involved in protecting the data of the Chamber of Deputies. Now we see the consequences".

Asked if any ransom was demanded following the cyber attack, the head of government stated: "A ransom is excluded. What to redeem? I suppose this attack wouldn't have been so famous if a copy of my report card hadn't been stolen. It's not a problem, I'm changing my report card. It is obvious what we are dealing with; we are dealing with a hybrid war and not only in Romania, the whole of Europe is subject to this attack. You realize what is happening, and this is not the first time I say it, in the Republic of Moldova with these hybrid attacks during this period. Especially since there will not be elections only in Romania on June 9, between June 6 and 9 there will be elections all over Europe. To understand the whole picture and the whole stake of these attacks at this moment".

Moreover, the Directorate for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism has announced that it has opened a criminal case in connection with the cyber attack on the Chamber of Deputies, in which investigations are being carried out in rem (ed. - regarding the deed) for committing the crimes of illegal access to a computer system, altering the integrity of computer data, disrupting the operation of computer systems and blackmail. According to DIICOT, this stage of the investigation does not mean the formulation of accusations against any person, but establishes the procedural framework necessary to gather evidence in order to correctly and completely establish the state of facts and adopt a legal and thorough solution in the case.

Regarding the documents stolen by the hackers, a citizen who works in the IT field told Digi 24 that on a specialized website he saw an ad in which a group of hackers boasted that they had hacked the database of the Chamber of Deputies and that they would present members' personal data if they do not receive a ransom. It seems that they published part of the information, i.e. identity cards, including those of Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and the leader of the UDMR, Kelemen Hunor, and that the hackers would also have asked for a ransom of 0.8 bitcoins, i.e. 30,000 euros.

The attack on the Chamber of Deputies was followed by another attack on the website of the National Directorate of Cyber Security (DNSC) on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, when 18,000 hits per second were recorded between 1:00 and 7:00: 00. Fortunately, perhaps thanks to DNSC's modern data protection system, the site has not suffered any security breaches, unlike the Chamber of Deputies.

It is certain that, although we have DNSC and Cybercint (European Cyber Security Center) in Bucharest, it was possible for a cyber attack on one of the three fundamental institutions of the state - the Parliament - to be crowned with success.

It is well known that in the current geopolitical and strategic context, through the lens of the war illegally started by the Russian Federation in Ukraine, our country has become a favorite target of hackers from the former Soviet space, a fact confirmed by the official registration of over 25,000 cyber attacks that have place every day in Romania. We talk about the official recording of cyber security incidents because not all of these incidents are reported to the DNSC, the Police or the Prosecutor's Office, and it is possible that the number of daily cyber crimes is much higher than those officially recorded.

Under these conditions, it is expected that the authorities will invest quickly to improve the security of the IT infrastructure and databases, and a first step in this direction will be the launch this month of the public procurement for the government cloud that will interconnect the databases of data from most public authorities and institutions and which, according to Bogdan Ivan, the Minister of Digitalization, will have the newest technology that will ensure the security of this data for the coming years.

But this cloud will also be safe as long as the operators in the system are attentive to every step they take, to every action and human error will not intervene which, according to the Minister of Digitalization, is the basis of over 90% of the successes recorded by cyber attacks.

It is certain that recent events show us that we do not only have a failed state, as President Klaus Iohannis claimed last year, but also a state vulnerable to cyber attacks at a time when the need for maximum security on the Eastern Flank of NATO and the Union European is bigger than ever.