“The biggest threat for Lithuania comes from the Russian Federation. Very specific criminal groups have been identified and they are funded by Russian authorities. These groups create complex viruses undetectable for commercial measures, and their main goal is to take control of the computer networks and systems of their opponents, i.e. ours, and, with no doubt, steal information,” Kerza told the national television LRT’s Dienos Tema.
In his words, there used to be only information attacks which were later replaced by cyber attacks. And there was an incident earlier this year when criminals hired by the Russian Federation launched a joint informational and cyber attack.
“It was an attack against one of the major news websites as their servers were taken over, and our national defense minister was used as one of the participants of that “fake news”. Under the cover that there was a bad minister, a virus was created and put into a document and sent to a number of addresses. So they were very aware of whose computers they want to get into,” Kerza said.
The National Cyber Security Center recorded 55,000 security incidents last year, or around 150 a day.