The largest scientific body in Spain It’s been two weeks without access to Internet. The Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) has informed this Tuesday that he was the victim of a cyber attack from Russia that has paralyzed access to their systems.
The computer attack occurred on July 16 and 17 and was detected by this body, dependent on the Ministry of Science and Innovation, on the 18th. “Immediately the protocol marked by the Operations Center of cybersecurity (COCS) and the National Cryptologic Center (CCN),” they explained.
A protocol to limit the impact of the attack that forces access to unaffected computing services to be cut off to prevent the virus spread to infect your systems. The CSIC has reported that, two weeks after the attack, “just over a quarter” of its centers have already recovered activity and their connection to the net. “In the next few days it will be restored throughout the network of centers,” they added.
Russian attack
The type of attack that has affected the CSIC systems is known as ‘Ransomware‘, a computer virus that penetrates the victim’s system to block access to essential data by encrypting it as if they were hostages and demands the payment of a ransom to free them. This method of digital kidnapping has already been used, for example, to paralyze the largest oil pipeline network in the United States. The public body has also clarified that “to date, no loss or kidnapping of sensitive or confidential information has been detected.”
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Although a final report is still missing that gives more details of what happened, the CSIC has reported that the experts point to groups of cyber criminals linked to the Kremlin. Already last March the National Intelligence Center (CNI) raised the alert level (to number 3 out of 5) and warned of the growing danger of “critical” computer attacks coming from Russia against Spanish infrastructures.
Researchers’ discomfort
The CSIC statement has come after Pablo Chacón Montes, principal investigator of his Structural Bioinformatics research group, published a ‘letter to the editor‘ in the ABC newspaper in which he explained how the ‘sine die’ disconnection of the systems of the largest scientific body in Spain was affecting them. “Research projects delayed, communications cut, CSIC administration blocked, thousands and thousands of euros in losses,” he lamented. “Shameful, the main investigation agent inoperative and nobody cares.”