Deputy PM demands resignations of “Bulgarian Posts” management, hacker attack possibly of Russian origin

Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister, Kalina Konstantinova, on May 3, announced that she had asked for the resignations of the entire management of Bulgarian Posts. In her words, the company has been deliberately led to bankruptcy, has been systematically underfunded and the accumulating problems were neglected both by the management of Bulgarian Posts and by the former ruling GERB.

Cyber-attack on Bulgarian Posts disrupts payment of pensions

Overcoming the hacker attack at the Bulgarian Posts is still in process, but the most essential services have already been restored, Konstantinova's team announced. Currently, a cleanup of the servers of all computers and systems in the branch network of "Bulgarian Posts" is underway.

Currently, the services for payment of pensions and international shipments are functioning in the Bulgarian Posts. Money transfers service is expected to be working within days. So far, there is no indication that personal data has been leaked. However, part of the Bulgarian Posts archive is likely to be lost.

The virus that attacked the Bulgarian Posts carries the handwrting of the Russian Federation, Konstantinova's team said. It is coded in such a manner that it cannot affect Russia or countries of the former USSR. In addition, all the tools were compiled using the Delphi software commonly used in the Russian Federation. This, of course, does not 100% prove Russian involvement in the attack, but similar attacks have recently been carried out against the post offices of Greece and the Netherlands, the deputy prime minister's team for good governance clarified.

The hacker attack was carried out from abroad, and the management of the Bulgarian posts allowed a delay of 6 hours in which the recommendations to disconnect all servers from the Internet were not implemented. Thus, the virus has spread everywhere, reaching the archives as well, they added..

There are reports of hacker attacks on other countries, but they were unsuccessful and would in no case have reached a similar scale as the one on the Bulgarian Posts, said the Head of Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security, Plamen Tonchev.

He pointed out that there were external and internal reasons that allowed the cyber attack against Bulgarian Posts to unfold on such a scale. Against the backdrop of the uncertain geopolitical situation, many instructions for carrying out cyber attacks have appeared for free use on the Internet, which are used by both sides in the war and by criminal rings. Bulgarian Posts’ systematic neglect of cybersecurity has also contributed to the deployment of the attack.

"Bulgarian Posts" is the postal service provider with the largest resources in the country - it has 2,973 offices, 9,000 employees in over 2,300 locations, which is six times more resources than the market leader in postal and courier services, Deputy Prime Minister Konstantinova said.

However, Bulgarian Posts has a market share of less than 2%, and this is while the postal services market in the country is growing by 30%, she noted. At the same time, the company has been providing services from which it has been making a loss. For the distribution of promotional brochures, for example, Bulgarian Posts received BGN 1 million and spent BGN 5 million, Konstantinova said and asked why the management was in office for the sixth year given these poor results.

"No one would hold people in managerial position, who allow the loss of market share at a time when the market is growing by 30% per year. We are determined to save Bulgarian Posts and work to clear their name and enter the 21st century," Konstantinova said.

She added that the Recovery and Resislience Plan includes a 100 million modernization project for Bulgarian Posts, which represents the largest investment made in the company in recent years.

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