Friday, March 29

The Government denies the cyberattack against the Ministry of Economy

The Government and the Police have officially denied that the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation has suffered a cyberattack. The ABC newspaper had reported this early on Monday, alluding to the fact that the offensive had gained access to “very sensitive data” from the agency’s Analysis department, which handles information such as the working lives of citizens or confidential documentation of the Business. “It is absolutely false,” say executive sources.

“No department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs has received the mentioned attack nor has an investigation been opened by the National Police. Neither did the ABC newspaper contact the Ministry’s press department to verify the information”, stresses an official government comment. Minutes before, sources from the Ministry of the Interior had already denied that the Police were carrying out a “secret investigation” into the incident, as ABC claims.

“All the Ministry’s cybersecurity systems are active and under continuous surveillance. Zero risk does not exist and extreme caution must be exercised before Internet risks”, they add from the department headed by Vice President Nadia Calviño.

The information about this new cyberattack that the Government denies came shortly after it was confirmed that a computer offensive had access to the data of half a million taxpayers through the Tax Agency systems, as revealed by elDiario.es.

That hack was carried out against the General Council of the Judiciary and allowed the assailants to infiltrate the Judicial Neutral Point. It is a telecommunications network that connects the courts and other judicial bodies with the rest of the State institutions, but whose management depends on the governing body of the judges. Through this portal, cybercriminals were able to jump into other administrations such as the Treasury.

According to ABC, the cyberattack against the Economy would have been another derivative of the security breach in the Judicial Neutral Point, an extreme that the Government also denies.



www.eldiario.es