Is it possible to lose property due to hacking of registries: expert opinion
23 December 12:16
OPINION
Former Justice Minister Denys Malyuska sees no particular problems with the recent Russian cyberattack on Ukrainian registries. According to him, most of these registries were open anyway, and there are quite a few backups, so the Russians did not steal or destroy anything in particular, Komersant ukrainskyi reports.
“The vast majority of the information that the Russians claim to have stolen was already freely available,”
– he told Ukrainska Pravda.
The only exception, he said, was the State Register of Civil Status Acts.
“This is one of the most closed registers, where information is stored that seems to have no secret – that someone was born or married. But at the same time, there is a secret that is strictly protected by law – the secret of adoption,”
– said the former official. Now this information is in the hands of Russians.
Malyuska emphasized that the latest attack is not the first one carried out by Russians during a full-scale war. However, they used to focus on stealing information, and now they have not only stolen it, but also destroyed it.
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Russian cyberattack and the situation with registries
on December 19, 2024, Ukraine suffered one of the largest external cyberattacks that affected state registries. rf launched a cyberattack on state registries that are under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine. The hackers paralyzed dozens of key systems, which led to the suspension of important services and jeopardized the safety of critical data. The Ministry of Justice suspended the operation of dozens of registries for security reasons.
The registries will be restored today, December 23. They will try to restore them completely within two weeks. First, the Ministry of Justice will restore the Unified Register of Powers of Attorney, the Unified Register of Special Forms of Notarial Documents and the Inheritance Register. This will ensure proper data accounting and minimize the negative impact of potential unlawful notarial acts.
The next priority is to restore the State Register of Civil Status Acts, the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs, and the State Register of Real Estate Rights and Encumbrances.
According to the SBU, according to the main version of the investigation, the special services of the aggressor country, Russia, are behind the large-scale cyberattack on Ukraine’s state registers. In particular, it could have been carried out by hackers affiliated with the hostile intelligence of the Russian GRU.
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Registry infrastructure destroyed; the attack is unprecedented
Cybersecurity expert Kostyantyn Korsun in an exclusive commentary for calls this attack unprecedented for Ukrainian registries, although not the most critical among all cyberattacks on Ukrainian resources.
“If we talk about attacks on registries, this is an unprecedented case. Nothing like this has ever happened before. This is the most critical attack in the history of the Ukrainian state. If we talk about cyberattacks on Ukrainian resources in general, this is not the worst attack and not the most severe consequences, because, for example, ‘M.E.doc’ [a virus attack on the systems of Ukrainian banks and companies in 2017] had a much more negative effect,”
– explains the expert.
According to him, the likelihood of serious consequences for registry users is very low, as copies of the registries have been preserved:
“The probability that we will all lose our apartments, cars, children, wives… is very low. I would say less than a percentage. Because there are copies of the registers. These are digital copies that were stored separately, which hackers could not theoretically reach.”
Korsun says the main problem is the destruction of infrastructure:
“The Russians destroyed the infrastructure that hosted these databases. That is, there are copies that store information about all of us. But in order for it to work as an automatic system (issuing a request, issuing a response, etc.), this information system needs to be built. It is this infrastructure that the Russians destroyed,
– explains the expert.
The expert does not share the expectations of the Ministry of Justice regarding a two-week restoration. According to his estimates, the full restoration of all systems may take about a month.
“In a month, all operations will be fully restored. And within two weeks, as Stefanishyna promised, they are unlikely to be fully restored. But they will start working slowly. It’s like it was with Kyivstar a year ago – first they resumed operations in one region, then in another, and so on,”
– summarizes Korsun.
