Lithuania & Poland Issue Cyber Attack Warnings

As threatened for several days, Russian troops have begun their attempt to invade Ukraine, with over 100,000 troops crossing Ukraine's borders from Crimea, Belarus as well as Russia itself.

These events are heightening fears among neighbouring countries who, unlike Ukraine, are  NATO members, who might soon find  Russian forces on their borders.  Following widespread cyber attacks on Ukraine government and infrastructure, Lithuania and Poland have warned organisations to prepare for similar attacks in their countries, including power cuts, attacks on critical  infrastructure and on communications networks.

Losing electricity and Internet access are among "extreme but possible" scenarios that Lithuania's central bank told finance companies to be ready for in a letter sent to them last week and seen by Reuters. The letter instructed banks to actively test their ability to withstand cyber attacks and ensure contingency plans were in place to respond to threats, including ransomware attacks and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. 

Lithuania, along with Baltic neighbours Latvia and Estonia, share a common power grid with Russia. Poland has alerted the security services and public administration to beware of cyber threats to banks and to prepare for the possibillity of digital assaults and the sudden loss of electricity and internet access. 

Poland’s Government Center for Security (GCS) has told security services and public administration to be on the alert for cyber threats. The GCS introduced an ALFA-CRP alert level across the country that will remain in place until  at least February 28. “The ALFA-CRP alert is a signal for security services and the whole public administration to be particularly vigilant... This means that the administration is obliged to conduct increased monitoring of the state of security of ICT systems.” the GCS said is a statement.

Poland and Lithuania’s actions came into force before the beginning of the invasion, following  Ukraine’s defence ministry, army and two of the country’s banks came under cyber attack last week. At least 10 Ukrainian websites were knocked offline by large scale DDoS attacks which,  causing problems with banking apps and online payments.  

Gov.PL:    APNews:    TEISS:   MSN:   Reuters:    Infosecurity Magazine:    Cybersecurity News:   Image: Unsplash

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