Category: Albania

A ransomware attack that took place on July 15th of this year disrupted most of the government’s IT infrastructure in Albania, including utility websites. For this reason, the Albanian government issued a 24 hours time frame on September 7th,2022 to all Italian embassy diplomats and high-profile citizens to vacate the country on an immediate note.

Edi Rama, the Albanian Prime Minister, issued this statement from the Tirana Capital and added that all diplomatic ties with Iran will remain severed till further notification.

Security analysts suggest that such public statements will be needed more in the near future, as some countries are taking down their adversaries through cyber aggression.

John Hultquist, the VP of Mandiant, applauded the decision taken by Albania against a state funded cyber attack and appreciated the courage with which Mr. Rama dealt with the situation.

Iran has condemned the allegations put forward by the Albanian Prime Minister as totally baseless and false.

Conversely, the United States and United Kingdom have deeply condemned the attack and added that it will hold Iran as fully accountable for the digital invasion it conducted on a NATO ally.

NOTE- The decision to cut down diplomatic ties with Iran was issued by the PM, after the Albanian National Agency for the Information Society(AKSHI) conducted a detailed analysis on the state that launched the cyber attack. And AKSHI claims that it has appropriate evidence to confirm its allegations.

 

The post Albania asks Iranians to vacate because of a Ransomware Attack appeared first on Cybersecurity Insiders.

A cyber-attack hit Albania, a region in Europe,, resulting in the shutdown and disruption of several government websites in and around the region Tirana. The Albanian National Agency for the Information Society (AKSHI) stated confirmed the news and assured that it will release more details on the incident as soon as the investigation gets concluded.

It seems to be a state funded attack as the list of disrupted websites includes the web portals linked to Prime Ministers Office, e-Albania and country’s parliament.

A team of security experts from Microsoft has been assigned the duty to investigate the cyber incident. And the Jones Group International Team is also offering assisting the tech giant in the probe.

For those uninitiated, in the first week of May, the Government of Albania closed all civil state offices to favor only the operations of government online portal e-Albania that offered services related to residence, tax and business activities to citizens of Albania.

NOTE 1- For the past two years, Albania is being marred by constant data protection scandals that include information leak of database related to car registration plates, phone numbers, names, employers, salaries and such.

NOTE 2- Albania is in Eastern Europe and Tirana is its capital and has Ilir Meta as its President.

NOTE 3- Till the year 1953, Albania was considered as an economically backward country. But all thanks to some political and economic reforms, the country transformed now into an upper middle-income country.

 

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