This year’s longest cyber attack lasted more than two months, while last year it was only seven days, Chairman of the Board of Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) VAS Ęirts Ozols said at a press conference on Wednesday.
This year’s longest cyber attack lasted more than two months, while last year it was only seven days, Chairman of the Board of Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC) VAS Ęirts Ozols said at a press conference on Wednesday.
The LVRTC did not reveal to LETA what resource the specific attacks were carried out on.
Ozols pointed out that last year 450 attacks on state institutions were repelled, while in the four months of this year more than half of the number of attacks repelled in the previous year have been repelled. The number of attacks repelled in January this year is greater than the number of attacks repelled in one quarter of 2022.
Cyber attackers are centrally controlled, politically motivated and usually paid – attacks are organized like any paid campaign, and often the motivation to carry out attacks is financial. It can be observed that the attacks increased in connection with various national holidays, the support given to Ukraine, as well as in connection with the demolition of monuments.
At the same time, Ozols pointed out that it is no longer possible to determine where the attackers come from, as political attackers are organized from various countries.
Baiba Kashkina, head of the information technology (IT) security incident prevention institution “Cert.lv”, said that if the attackers are from Latvia, the State Police is involved, because “the fact that our resources are attacked from Latvia is unacceptable”.
Speaking about the reasons why attackers manage to gain access to various systems, Ozol said that security walls are broken down by individual mistakes – one of the weakest points is the individual, including both in his own interests and as an employee.
Ozols also called for the use of app and program updates. If once updates to apps were mostly for improving the user experience, now updates fix various loopholes and “holes” in app security.
At the same time, Ozols emphasized that the investment in LVRTC’s security infrastructure over the last five years has averaged 500,000 euros per year, while “the next three years have been marked by investments approaching five million euros”.
LVRTC is the main terrestrial network operator of radio and television programs in the country.
The turnover of the company in 2021 was 22.065 million euros, and the profit – 4.627 million euros, according to “Firmas.lv” information. The financial indicators for 2022 have not yet been made public. LVRTC also manages parts of the state-owned mobile operator “Latvijas mobilais telefons”.
