Complete State Postal System Outage in Bulgaria

December 6, 2022

INCIDENT

A major Russian-originated ransomware attack occurred on the Bulgarian State Post Office system. Six hours passed between the beginning of their attack and the moment when the servers were turned off and the system's connection to the Internet was cut off. During this time, hackers had access to the entire database and were able to encrypt or even delete archives Hackers moved laterally into all IT and OT systems affecting all 26 services offered.

Besides affecting systems for payment and transfer of money, pensions, etc, the sending and receiving of post, domestic and international was interrupted for weeks. After a time, post could be received but only if the recipient did not owe amounts at time of delivery.

Incident Date

April 16, 2022

Location

Bulgaria

Estimated Cost

Complete state postal system outage - halting postal delivery, for 2+ weeks

Type of Malware

No Malware identified

Threat Source

No threat source identified