“Like many international companies, the state of Carinthia has fallen victim to an international hacker group. With yesterday’s publication of data components, the cybercriminals want to further increase the pressure on the country and blackmail us into paying a ransom,” says the governor Peter Kaiser (SPÖ). Therefore, it was decided to work with Dr. Cornelius Granig to work together – an international IT and cybercrime expert.
“We will not be blackmailed”
The further procedure will be directly with the Minister of the Interior Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) voted. “It is important to bring the best minds to Carinthia – regardless of whether they are employees of authorities or external specialists – and thus put an end to the activities of the hackers,” Kaiser clarifies and continues: “It is important to me that everything is done to ensure the protection of our citizens’ data and personal information. We will not be blackmailed by criminals.”
“They care regarding the money”
According to an initial assessment, Cornelius Granig does not assume that it was a targeted attack on the state of Carinthia. “The attackers are criminals whose primary concern is money. They arbitrarily select attack targets and try to penetrate their systems via known or as yet unknown vulnerabilities. Once in the system, they steal data, encrypt the systems, and then attempt to blackmail victims. With these crimes, the criminals move under the protection of the anonymity of the dark web and use cryptocurrencies, making it very difficult to track them down,” Granig describes the cybercriminals’ approach.
The country’s IT experts will now be able to focus primarily on restoring the systems affected by the hacker attack.
Wer ist Cornelius Granig?
Dr. Cornelius Granig is an Austrian top manager and security expert who is also the author of a book dealing with the development of computer crime in our society. Among other things, he was Managing Director of the international technology groups IBM and Siemens, which develop and use the latest cyber security technologies. In addition, he was responsible for the areas of IT and security as a member of the board at Raiffeisen and the Vienna Insurance Group.
After his professional return from Ukraine in 2016, the native of Carinthia worked as a management consultant for the international auditing and consulting firm Grant Thornton. dr Granig and his team work closely with the European police authority Europol, the Federal Criminal Police Office and other law enforcement agencies and help victims of computer crime to defend once morest attacks, identify the attackers and contain the damage caused by the ongoing digitization of crime.
