Romania’s Parliament cyber security was left red-faced after hackers broke into the data base and found the prime minister’s identity documents and private medical reports.
Officials only discovered the cyber attack on the Chamber of Deputies after hackers began boasting about it online and allegedly even tried to blackmail lawmakers, threatening to release personal details.
Demanding a ransom, they went as far as to published the identity cards of Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu and Kelemen Hunor, who heads the party for ethnic Hungarians.
Ciolacu said on Wednesday that he would change his ID card following the data breach.
The hackers reportedly demanded a ransom of 0.8 bitcoins, the equivalent of 30,000 euros.
Bogdan Ivan, research minister said 316 documents had been stolenand some 250 Gigabytes of data had been harvested, a mixture of personal documents and data linked to MPs’ electronic devices.
The Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said they had opened a criminal case. Lawmakers claimed that no ransom demand had been made.
“At the moment, state institutions are doing their job and….are expected to issue a technical report based in which (the parliament speaker) will act against the wrongdoers,” minister Ivan said.
Data security is the joint responsibility of STS, special telecommunications agency and the parliament.
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