Hellenic Public Properties Co, HPPC, the company managing the real estate assets of the Greek state, suffered Distributed Denial-of-Service, DDoS, attacks on November 8, media reported on Wednesday.
Opposition MPs accused the conservative government of treating cyber security “supertficially” and demanded a national strategy to deal with the issue.
“Cyber security is treated by the Greek government and in particular by the Ministry of Digital Governance superficially in terms of communication and as a simple modern technological international trend … The cyber attack on the HPPC calls for a coordinated and unified national cyber security strategy,” said opposition SYRIZA MP George Karameros.
DDoS attacks aim to disrupt the normal traffic of a system and bring it down. In these kinds of attacks, a ransom is usually demanded for its recovery.
The breach in HPPC’s information systems had a limited effect on its operations, which are gradually being restored. The company assured the media that it had not detected any data breaches. HPPC said it had informed the Greek Data Protection Authority and National Cyber Security Authority.
It is not the first time hackers have targeted Greek public bodies.
The national natural gas system operator, DESFA, in August said it had suffered a cyber attack. A group of cyber extortionists, Ragnar Locker, in a post, took responsibility for the attack and posted 361 gigabytes of DESFA’s data on the dark web.
In May, a massive cyber attack on the data bank providing school exam questions createdhavoc among teachers and students, causing delays and the cancellation of exams.
In March 2022, hackers brought down Greek Post’s computer systems. On January 17, two hospitals in the Attika region were targeted by cyber attackers who used the same type of ransomware.
BIRN tried calling HPPC to ask for additional information about the attack but by time of publication there was no answer. HPPC’s portfolio includes apartments, hotels, buildings, warehouses and marinas among assets located across the country.
