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“The NVSC mail, which has been inactive for some time, can complicate your job and provide and receive information,” the minister wrote on his Facebook account.
Urges not to open obscure email attachments that could infect computers.
NVSC representative Austina Vžesniauskaitė told BNS that the center’s email on Wednesday morning is not yet operational and this complicates the center’s work.
“Email is not working yet, it is being viewed due to other information systems. (…) Basically, it is one of the means of communication, data collection is now complicated, every minute is very expensive for us, those few hours will really get in the way, ”said the NVSC representative.
The National Cyber Security Center promises more information on the incident later on Wednesday.
Several institutions have been affected by the spread of the virus by email
The National Center for Public Health (NVSC) and several other institutions have been affected by the virus that spreads via email, says Rytis Rainys, director of the National Center for Cyber Security (NCSC).
The head of the cybersecurity agency, BNS, said that the Trojan.Emotet virus spread via email on Tuesday as a file with the zip extension, and when it was opened, the email was automatically distributed to other recipients.
The Ministry of National Defense indicates that these false letters sent by the NVSC were received by the Government, representatives of ministries, as well as people with whom the NVSC specialists interacted during the epidemiological diagnosis.
“Yesterday, the emails reached various consumers, state institutions, municipalities with that Emotet virus. The file contains a virus that, when activated, downloads its extensions, takes over the damaged computer, intercepts correspondence, uses contact addresses and continues to distribute, or turns the user’s computer into a zombie, receives commands from the servers of command and control and spam, for example. Rainys told BNS.
According to him, the first lyrics were recorded on Tuesday, around 10 pm in the morning. The malware was encrypted and password protected, so it was not detected by antivirus systems, and users had the impression, among other things, that the messages were part of correspondence with colleagues, that is, fragments of correspondence were used previous real.
The email sent also included a password that the user had to enter when opening the zip file.
R. Rainys confirmed that the letters were open to “dozens or perhaps hundreds” of employees of the National Center for Public Health and recipients related to the center, various municipalities and other institutions, including the field of health.
With the help of specialists from the cybersecurity center, the virus’s effects have been wiped out since Tuesday, and final work is expected to be completed on Wednesday.
According to him, the main purpose of the virus was probably to spread spam and thus earn revenue for the attack organizers, but later it could also connect computers to a common botnet and thus exploit it for more complex cyber attacks.
“The virus can download new commands and do much more damage, so we recommend cleaning it. Modern antivirus systems detect the Emotet virus (…). The next minute, the virus can download new extensions and may be involved in some attacks DDoS, where information services on the Internet can be disabled, such as destructive attacks, ”said the director of the Cyber Security Center.
According to him, an even bigger wave of the virus occurred in October. Tracking an attack organizer is difficult for professionals due to the type of propagation, as it is sent from one user to another and thus forms thousands of links.
The NKSC recommends that all email system operators adjust their security rules and filters to detect the Emotet virus.
Rainys also claimed that it could be clarified at a later stage whether the incident could also be related to cyberattacks against the European Medicines Agency a few weeks ago and the first coronavirus vaccine providers in Europe, Pfizer and BioNTech, to seize COVID. 19 related facts.
“Rebuilding postal systems is a task of the first order. By dealing with it, it would be possible to correlate times and events in the world. I would not rule it out,” he said.
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