Celler: No Changes Being Made to Home Ownership Database

Bratislava, January 9 (TASR) - No alterations to the home ownership database are being made, neither the owners nor ownership relationships are being changed, and the crisis management team of the Geodesy, Cartography, and Cadastre Office (UGKK) is working to restore the system as soon as possible, UGKK chairman Juraj Celler has told a news conference that he held jointly on Thursday with Lukas Hlavicka, a member of the security incident response team. Celler stressed that there's no need to worry or spread alarming news. An advanced targeted attack on UGKK was identified by an information technology provider at 8.50 a.m. on Sunday (January 5). As soon as this attack was identified by the provider, the process of resolving the security incident was launched in cooperation with the National Security Bureau (NBU) and other invited security forces," said Hlavicka. This was partly why the infrastructure was disconnected from external networks and services, explained Hlavicka. The reason was to prevent the attack from spreading within the infrastructure and attacking third parties. "Given the fact that the office has multi-layered backups, it is able to restore data for providing critical services from secondary backups. However, these are currently having to be secured, checked and identified to ensure their integrity. Only then will it be possible to restore them and put them in operation," stated Hlavicka. The incident is currently under investigation, with all security forces being involved in this, said Hlavicka. Attempts to resolve the incident are being coordinated by NBU in cooperation with the Interior Ministry, the ​​Defence Ministry's cyber-defence centre and other relevant security forces, said Hlavicka. Hlavicka stated that no more technical details can be provided at the moment in order to avoid thwarting the investigation. UGKK and the Interior Ministry on Wednesday (January 8) confirmed that UGKK's information system, which is used by land registry departments of district offices, had been hit by a large-scale cyber-attack from abroad. The offices of land registry departments have been temporarily closed as a precaution. The Office for Combating Organised Crime (UBOK) is dealing with this case of suspected unauthorised interference with the real estate registry computer system. ko/df