Ministry of Justice restores three key registers after cyberattack

The Ministry of Justice announced that three key notarial registries — the Unified Register of Powers of Attorney, the Inheritance Register, and the Unified Register of Special Forms of Notarial Documents — are now operational after a Russian cyberattack.

Notaries can now fully register powers of attorney, wills, inheritance cases, and verify special forms.

The Ministry also said that all notarial actions performed during the outage will be recorded within five business days, and enhanced cyber protection measures have been put in place.

One of the largest cyberattacks by Russia on Ukrainian state registers

On Dec. 19, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna announced that Russia had launched the largest cyberattack on Ukrainian state registers in recent times, targeting the civil status acts registry, the state register of legal entities and entrepreneurs, and the real estate rights registry.

She stated that it would take up to two weeks to restore the registers, and there has been no confirmation of a personal data leak from the attack.

On Dec. 20, Andrii Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, reported that Russian hackers linked to Russia's GRU military intelligence were behind the cyberattack on the Ministry of Justice's state registers.

Deputy Defense Minister Kateryna Chornohorenko confirmed that while the Ministry of Defense's registers were functioning normally, the Reserve+ application for mobilization deferrals had been temporarily suspended.

Oleksandr Fedienko, a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense, and Intelligence, said a login from a high-level account was recorded during the attack.

He suggested the hack could have been carried out via phishing or by bribing an employee with access to the registers.