A large-scale hacker attack stopped the work of the government of an entire state for a month

Since the beginning of November, Vanuatu’s government IT structures have been forced to suspend their operations completely, just as the new government began its work. It is now known that about 70% of government agencies have already resumed work, but the hacker attack caused huge losses to the country’s economy. Among the main inconveniences: government officials lost access to mailboxes and accounts, and Vanuatu citizens could not renew their driver’s licenses, pay taxes, or contact emergency services.

Experts explained that regions like Vanuatu are an «ideal» target for cyberattacks because they do not have enough resources to ensure the protection of information systems at the proper level, compared to the capabilities of government organizations in Europe and the United States. Cybercriminals calling themselves BlackCat are already suspected of the hacker attack on Vanuatu. Earlier, the attackers tried to carry out identical attacks in Italy and Florida (USA).

At the end of March, the Vanuatu government supported the idea of creating a crypto island proposed by British real estate specialist Anthony Welch. The 300-hectare Lataro Island was supposed to become the new crypto capital of the world. In 2017, the island’s owners planned to turn the territory into a wildlife reserve to generate revenue and protect a rare species of crab. At the time, no one was interested in this idea, so Welch «bet» on cryptocurrencies.

In addition to cyberattacks on the IT structures of states, cryptocurrency fraudsters hack government social networks. For example, in early July, hackers gained access to the UK army’s Twitter and YouTube accounts to spread a scam to steal cryptocurrencies. Then the hackers renamed the official British Army YouTube channel to Ark Invest, deleting all previous videos and publishing several deepfake speeches by Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey. Under the video, users were urged to invest in fraudulent crypto projects.