Greece's Land Registry suffers data breach amid wave of cyberattacks

The Land Registry agency in Greece announced that it experienced a limited-scope data breach following a series of 400 cyberattacks targeting its IT infrastructure over the past week. Hackers compromised employee terminals and stole 1.2 GB of data, which represents approximately 0.0006% of the total data held by the government organization.

The agency assured that the stolen data did not include any personal information of citizens. The breach primarily involved typical administrative documents, the exposure of which is not expected to impact the registry’s operations. The hackers attempted to create a malicious user account to infiltrate the central database, but these efforts were unsuccessful.

While unauthorized actors accessed one of the agency’s daily-updated database backups, their attempt to exfiltrate the data to an external server was thwarted. The internal investigation, supported by the Cybersecurity Directorate of the General Staff of National Defense, has found no evidence of ransomware on the compromised systems.

In response to the attacks, the agency has taken emergency measures to mitigate the risk of ransomware. These measures include terminating all VPN access to block potential malicious users. Additionally, all employees have had their passwords reset, and two-factor authentication has been made mandatory to enhance account security.

The last recorded attack occurred in the early hours of July 19, 2024, and was successfully blocked. Although no further updates have been provided, it is unclear if the attacks are ongoing. Despite these cyber threats, the agency’s digital services remain operational, and transactions with citizens have continued without interruption.