Malta Nationalist Party suffers major cyberattack

One of Malta’s main political parties has become the victim of a cyberattack; expected data leak

In a public statement, PN Secretary General Francis Zammit Dimech announced that the Nationalist Party’s IT system has been hacked since it was accessed without any authorisation. It is believed that the party suffered a major cyber attack and some sensitive information could have been illegally accessed.

The party is looking to take necessary and immediate action to minimise any effects of this cyber-attack while the party also asked the Data Commissioner and the police to begin an investigation into the matter.

SiGMA contacted one of our resident ‘Deep-Tech’ contributors, Alexandre Ouaknine, to have his say on the matter, while also presenting the party with his very own solution for this issue:

‘Avaddon is a new ransomware that encrypts the user’s data AND steals it. The operators then threatens to make the data public unless a ransom is paid.

On top of removing the shadow copies of the user’s files, Avaddon also deletes system backups, disables automatic repair and recovery, and cleans the bin. All this makes it very unique.

Paying the ransom does not guarantee that the data will not be leaded or resold anyway. So there is no point in paying.

The PN obviously did not opt for prevention and will now pay the financial, legal and political price. If such ransomware would hit an online casino, the damages could mean the end of the iGaming company running it.’

Companies and political parties should all take a look at Alexandre’s series on SiGMA’s youtube page where he discusses all things related to security:

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