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Since March of last year, through a long article, BIRN drew attention to the threat of cyber attacks in the Western Balkans, whose countries were described as insufficiently prepared for such a situation.
“On paper they may look like that, but in practice things are completely different” was emphasized in the article that started with an illustration of the most serious attack of this kind in North Macedonia: the one against the website of the central election commission in the neighboring country.
Across the Balkans, states like North Macedonia have put plans on paper to tackle the threat of cyber terrorism, but the scale of attacks in recent years, coupled with the fact that many remain unsolved, shows a serious shortcoming when it comes to the word is about putting it into reality, experts say.
Alarmingly according to them, Bosnia and Herzegovina does not even have a comprehensive cyber security strategy at the state level. In the case of Albania, it was underlined that “most targets lack the appropriate means to detect and react to cyber attacks”.
With the growing number of companies and government bodies developing digital services, we will witness an increasing number of attacks in the future,” was the warning at the time.
Ransomeware, a virus that encrypts users’ data and demands a reward for their return, was considered to be a major threat to the Balkan countries.
In 2020, hackers targeted the public administration of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad, blocking a data system and demanding 400,000 euros to restore access to the information.
“We don’t pay the reward,” said then mayor Milos Vucevic.
“I don’t even know how to pay it, how to justify the cost in the budget. It is not realistic to pay this. No one can blackmail Novi Sad,” he expressed.
But the problem goes beyond the Balkan borders. Finally, the Ansa news agency reported that the Italian tax agency may have fallen prey to a cyber attack by the LockBit group.
Authorities there are investigating whether information was leaked from it, as it is reported that hackers may have stolen 78 gigabytes of data.
According to Il Sole 24 Ore, the group has published the news of the hack on the dark web and has asked for a reward to be delivered within five days, otherwise it threatens to make the data public.
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