The remote service of the Foreign Administration is suspected of being a fracture attempt.
The Ministry for Foreign Affairs announced the suspicion of a burglary on Thursday. Outi Järvinen/ KL
An abnormal activity has been identified in the remote service used by the Foreign Administration. There is a suspicion of hacking, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs prevented the service on Tuesday and made an investigation to the Central Criminal Police. The Data Protection Officer has also been informed.
The vulnerabilities of the service became information already last year, the Director of Information Management at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ari Uusikartano tells Iltalehti.
Protected VPN connection should be able to be able to transfer information securely within a private network. However, weak points were found in the service.
– There is no service without services, so we took a thoughtful risk.
The system continued to use, but security control was enhanced as parallel service began to be deployed.
The use of a remote service was stopped when unusual activities were detected.
“It is likely that we could catch it almost immediately when the burglary has been made,” says Uusikartano.
So far, there is no information on what is behind the suspect’s burglary.
Investigation
The Cyber Security Center launched an investigation on Tuesday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Service Provider and the Office of the Government, which is responsible for the organization of remote access services, will also participate in the investigation.
The Foreign Affairs Administration consists of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Finnish diplomatic representations and consular representations.
Remote access services can be used to send a limited level data. These are part of the lowest level of security classification. Higher security classification information cannot be sent through the service.
Some of the foreign administration staff already use a parallel remote service. Its implementation will be extended to facilitate the performance of the tasks.