The Severity of Cyberattacks Elevated for Latvia

Category: Critical Infrastructure Security | Industries: Critical Infrastructure, Energy, Government, Telecommunication | Level: Strategic | Source: The Record

Latvia's support of Ukraine during the war with Russia has unfortunately resulted in more severe cybersecurity attacks. Since the war, Latvia has faced more serious cyberattacks to its government, critical infrastructure, and private businesses. A review of the attacks by The Record and Latvia’s Computer Emergency Readiness Teams (CERT) estimates cyberattacks against the country have increased by 30%. The most prominent threat actor operating against Latvia is the hacktivist group, Killnet, and its affiliates. Killnet has launched several distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the country's government which, fortunately "have no lasting impact." Attacks initiated by Killnet often miss their intended target, as CERT has observed the group attacking a website used by a Latvian agency for parks and recreation when their intended target was the Ministry of the Interior. As expressed by Varis Teivans the deputy of Latvia's CERT “Every time they claim to have hacked some of our websites and leaked information, it’s a lie, sometimes a very pathetic one.” Russia is expected to heighten cyberattacks against critical infrastructure organizations against Ukraine and their allies, specifically targeting telecommunications and energy sectors. Teivans is withheld from disclosing which Russian groups are involved in the campaign due to "security reasons."

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