site.btaCabinet's Security Council Reviews Unauthorized Access to National Revenue Agency Servers

July 16 (BTA) - The information sent to Bulgarian media
by a Russian domain definitely tallies with the information
available on the servers of the National Revenue Agency (NRA),
Interior Minister Mladen Marinov said here Tuesday. He noted
that this confirms that unauthorized access to the NRA servers
has taken place. Minister Marinov spoke at a briefing after an
extraordinary session of the Security Council with the Council
of Ministers, which was summoned by Prime Minister Boyko
Borissov after an alleged hacker attack against the NRA on
Monday.

A number of Bulgarian media outlets received an e-mail from an
anonymous group of hackers on Monday with a link to databases,
allegedly containing the personal information of millions of
Bulgarian citizens and companies, accessed from the NRA's
servers. The anonymous group of hackers called the Bulgarian
government "retarded" and its cybersecurity "a parody". The
e-mail's body ends with a quote attributed to the Anonymous and
a call to free Julian Assange.

Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov pointed out that about 3 per
cent of the NRA's database can be considered affected. In his
words, not only personal data was leaked, but also tax and
social security information. "Evaluations and analyses show that
 the tax and social security information that was leaked and is
being spread, is insufficient for drawing an overall conclusion
about the property or financial status of a given individual,"
Goranov added.

Commenting on the accident with the NRA's information security,
NRA Spokesperson Rossen Buchvarov said at a press conference
that the Agency's database was hacked because of the
vulnerability of one of the online services that the NRA
provides, that is, for refunds of VAT paid abroad. "As of this
moment, this vulnerability has been eliminated, the possibility
of abusing the data is limited, and the service has been
temporarily suspended. It will remain so until the NRA's
information security has been restored," Buchvarov explained.
LI/TH,MY



/TH/