Lithuanian interior ministry thwarts cyber intrusion into archived citizen data system

On Friday, Lithuania's Interior Ministry announced that an unauthorized intrusion targeted the EPEKIS information system, an archival repository for foreign citizenship applications that has not been actively used since 2018. Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas was alerted Thursday night and confirmed that enhanced security protocols detected the attack and prevented further spread. While the breach allowed entry to the system, officials say there is no evidence that any data was downloaded.

The ministry has reported the case to the Criminal Police Bureau, the State Data Protection Inspectorate and the National Cyber Security Centre, and has mandated a security audit of all its information systems. Katelynas noted that recent upgrades, including two-factor authentication, were implemented after a prior incident at the state-owned Registers Centre, and he could not rule out the involvement of an artificial-intelligence platform in the latest attack.