Breaches and incidents
Lithuanian Interior Ministry IT department (Lithuania): unauthorized access to archived EPEKIS citizenship-application system
Per LRT (BNS), the Interior Ministry said hackers “gained unauthorised access to the EPEKIS information system”, administered by its Information Technology...
- Disclosed
- Verification
- Reported by a reputable outlet, citing the company
What happened
- Per LRT (BNS), the Interior Ministry said hackers “gained unauthorised access to the EPEKIS information system”, administered by its Information Technology and Communications Department (IRD), an archival system unused since 2018 holding data on foreigners who applied for Lithuanian citizenship, mostly names and surnames without personal ID numbers.
- Root cause: not disclosed; the minister said authorities “could not rule out the use of an artificial intelligence platform.”
- No attacker named.
- Access was “immediately blocked”; newly installed security measures detected the attack and stopped it spreading; data sets were created after the breach but there was no evidence they were downloaded; the Criminal Police Bureau, data protection inspectorate and NKSC were notified and a review of all ministry systems ordered.