[RIA] The monthly summary of the Estonian Information System Authority (RIA) reveals that the services of the Health Insurance Fund were interrupted repeatedly due to technical reasons in November and district heating and water supply companies were targeted by a cyber attack.The Incident Response Department of RIA (CERT-EE) registered 378 cyber incidents with an impact in November. The majority of the incidents, as usual, were phishing sites, with 233 detected and blocked....
On 30 November, the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) of at least three Estonian companies were hit by cyber attacks. One of the attacks involved a district heating company and resulted in an interruption in the functioning of the control devices of eight boiler plants. The affected boiler plants were switched to manual control and the heat generation process was never at risk.
The other attack hit a water supply company of a rural municipality and resulted in a stoppage of the control devices of nine waste water pump stations and one potable water pump station, but the pump stations continued to operate. A third similar attack was targeted against a manufacturer of construction materials.
CERT-EE detected several dozen similar controllers accessible via the Internet in Estonia. The owners of the controllers or the service providers were notified of the wave of attacks and advised on how to protect themselves.
Similar attacks against the controllers produced by the Israeli company Unitronics have also occurred in other countries. Further information about the background of the attacks and the prevention thereof can be found on the website of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the United States (CISA) opens in a new tab.
The most significant disruptions of online services in Estonia in November involved the Health Insurance Fund. The use of digital prescriptions, the verification of the insurance status, and other services provided via X-tee were disrupted. The disruptions occurred on five different days and lasted from thirty minutes to three hours. They were caused by various technical reasons, according to the authority....