September 2, 2022
According to Montenegro’s Minister of Public Administration, Maras Dukaj, the organized cybercrime group behind the cyberattack on the Montenegrin government has demanded a ransom of $10 million.
According to Dukaj, the attackers used a “special virus” during the attack. He explained that the state could not give an estimate of when the services will be available. The effects of the cyberattack are already continuing for the tenth day with no solution in sight.
Initially, Dukaj and the country’s Defense Minister told local media that investigation findings linked the attack to Russian services, so officials took the opportunity to call on NATO allies to help them with incident response, defense and remediation.
After the initial allegations from the Montenegro officials, the Cuba ransomware gang claimed responsibility for the attack. The gang listed the Parliament of Montenegro (Skupstina) as its victims and also claimed to have stolen financial documents, correspondence with banks, balance sheets, tax records, compensation and even source code.
The gang published the stolen data in the “free” section of the site, which is available to any visitor without restrictions.
The sources for this piece include an article in BleepingComputer.
