A magistrate is leading an investigation into a hack of Nationalist Party data, with less than five days to go before a deadline set by cybercriminals behind the attack lapses.

On Monday night, the PN revealed it was the victim of an attack on its IT systems and said that hackers may have obtained information on its servers.

Hackers gave the party 240 hours, or 10 days, to “communicate and cooperate” and said they would release the documents online if they did not do so. Hackers say they will also attack the PN website with a Distributed Denial of Service, or DDOS attack, effectively taking it offline until the attack can be stopped. 

The cybercriminals used a tool dubbed 'Avaddon ransomware' to carry out the attack and have already published a selection of PN documents, including employee details, passport pictures and a studio rota, on the dark web.

The dark web is a part of the internet that requires special software to access and is not indexed by search engines.

With that 10-day deadline creeping closer, police told Times of Malta on Saturday that they could not delve into further details about the ongoing investigation. 

“A magisterial inquiry and police investigations is still on going in relation to this matter and it wouldn’t be prudent to divulge further information,” a police spokesperson said.

The magisterial inquiry is led by Victor Axiak.

Screenshot taken on Saturday morning of avaddon ransomeware website which carries sensitive PN documentsScreenshot taken on Saturday morning of avaddon ransomeware website which carries sensitive PN documents

A PN spokesperson said that the party still has no further updates about how documents were leaked.

The spokesperson said cybersecurity incidents have become a reality for every company.

“Whilst MediaLink Communications LTD has various information security software and hardware systems to detect and mitigate cyber-attacks, and also updates such systems frequently, cybercrime is continuously becoming more sophisticated and frequent, at times bypassing such security systems already in place,” he said.

After announcing that its IT system was attacked, the party said it had taken all necessary action to contain the damage and informed the data commissioner and police. 

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