Data theft of 600,000 Lithuanians: experts criticise state systems and demand leadership
Information security experts warn that the State Register data breach may be far more serious than officially acknowledged. Prime Minister Ruginienė is being called upon to provide leadership.
Experts: scale of data theft may exceed official reports
As Lrytas.lt reports, information security expert Marius Parešcius claims that data from the State Register Centre (RC) that leaked in early this year could have revealed far more information than has so far been publicly acknowledged.
"If the data was accessed using maximum permissions, then there would have been far more visible there than just State Register Centre report information," Parešcius said on the politics.lt podcast.
The expert also emphasised that the monitoring level at that time remains unclear: whether only two accounts, which the Interior Ministry (VRM) refers to, were compromised, or whether broader access was in operation. Similar questions are being raised regarding the Migration Department.
"What I found most interesting was to see how the data was being extracted, how much of it was being extracted and what was the sequence of actions," he added, noting that access rights for different accounts – those of a Migration Department employee, a prosecutor or a criminal intelligence officer – differ significantly.
Giedrimas Jeglinskas, a member of the analytical centre "Royal United Services Institute", views the situation as a matter of political accountability and directly points to Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė.
"This is a prime ministerial level question and there is no way around it. The most important thing is to establish who is currently responsible. In my opinion – the prime minister. And we want clear steps on what we will do," said Jeglinskas, urging the head of government to speak publicly and openly about the incident.
The incident is connected with the leaking of personal data of approximately 600,000 Lithuanian residents from State Register Centre systems.
Source: Lrytas.lt