Singaporean Defence Ministry reports cyberattack
Hanoi (VNA) – The Singaporean Ministry of
Defence (MINDEF) on February 28 announced that hackers stole basic personal
information of 850 military staff in an attack targeting its computer system.
The MINDEF detected the I-net system being attacked at
the beginning of this month.
The I-net system allows the ministry’s staff and
soldiers to get access to the Internet via the ministry’s end-user devices as
well as at the bases of Singapore’s armed forces.
Stolen data includes phone number, birth date, and
identification number.
The MINDEF instructed the Cybersecurity Agency and the
Government’s Technology Agency to check other governmental systems but detected
no new attacks.
The MINDEF’s statement said the attack had been
planned carefully with the goal of approaching confidential information. As the
I-net system does not connect with the internal network and it contains no
confidential information, hackers did not get any confidential information.
In 2016, Singapore disconnected civil servants’
working computer system from the Internet in case of cyberattacks.
Previously, some ministries of Singapore, including
the MINDEF and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, used their own customised
systems to browse the Internet.-VNA