City Halls are under hacker fire. Prague 5 had to close its workplace
“At night, Prague 5 became the target of a cyber attack. At the moment, all workplaces of the district office are out of operation. We are working hard to eliminate the consequences of the attack, “said the city district.
According to spokeswoman Marie Kurková, Prague 9 also recorded attacks. The Prague 9 office recorded cyber attacks, so far it was ready for them, “she said. Richard Bureš (ODS), the councilor of the first city district, also mentioned problems of a similar nature at Tuesday’s meeting of the Prague 1 City Council.
Other addressed town halls did not record the attacks. “At the moment, we have no information about any non-standard systems behavior, but we have also increased the inspection of backup systems. We are in contact with other IT staff in other parts of Prague to analyze the situation, we have also informed the office staff to be careful when working with incoming e-mails, ”said Josef Slobodník (ODS), Chairman of the Prague 8 Informatics Committee.
Similarly, the spokesperson of Prague 2, Andrea Zoulová, also provides. “We know about the risk, the employees of the district office were instructed and called for maximum caution when using electronic communication. Our IT staff is also in contact with colleagues from other town halls and works closely with the Prague 5 town hall in particular, ”she said. Prague 6 spokesman Jiří Hannich stated that the sixth city district had not seen any noticeable attack recently.
The Czech Republic is also threatening cyber warfare
At the end of February, the National Office for Cyber and Information Security (NUKIB) warned of “the growing threat of cyber attacks and cyber espionage associated with the ongoing armed conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine.”
As part of this warning, the office called on the organization and society to “guard against the most commonly used attack techniques and to update information systems and their components so that known vulnerabilities are not exploited.” The call also directly concerns the media, which according to NÚKIB could also be the target of an attack.
“We approach the issuance of this warning for preventive reasons, because the threat has risen above the current level due to the current situation,” said NÚKIB director Karel Řehka. He emphasized that the Office was “assessing this threat at a critical level” in terms of probability.
The warnings issued by NÚKIB must be dealt with by administrators and operators of systems regulated by the Cyber Security Act. “In particular, it shall take into account the threats described and the measures taken. We also recommend that warnings that do not fall under the Cyber Security Act be taken into account and that adequate measures be taken into account, ”stated Řehka.