https://www.npr.org/2022/12/06/1140752192/the-pacific-island-nation-of-vanuatu-has-been-knocked-offline-for-more-than-a-mo

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Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been knocked offline for more
than a month The prime minister says about 70 percent of services
have been restored, but officials have not commented on a cause or
whether ransom was paid. Nor did they respond to NPR's requests for
comment.

World

The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been knocked offline for
more than a month

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December 6, 20225:00 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Jenna McLaughlin headshot

Jenna McLaughlin

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The Pacific island nation of Vanuatu has been knocked offline for
more than a month

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[gettyimage]
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A Dec. 07, 2019, aerial view of the coastline of Port Vila, the
capital of Vanuatu. Mario Tama/Getty Images hide caption

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Mario Tama/Getty Images

A Dec. 07, 2019, aerial view of the coastline of Port Vila, the
capital of Vanuatu.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

The newly elected government in Pacific island nation of Vanuatu
encountered a serious problem from the very first day of its term on
Nov. 6 -- no one could use their government email accounts.

But then the situation got worse. Much worse.

Officials could not use any government computer services, from
renewing a drivers' license to paying taxes or accessing medical and
emergency information.

They were forced to turn to 20th century technology -- pen and paper.

That's a major problem in a nation where the population of around
320,000 people is distributed across dozens of islands north of New
Zealand.

"Imagine if in the U.S. or the U.K. or Australia, a new government
has started and there's a whole changeover ... you can't even
allocate email addresses to your new staff, you can't coordinate
what's happening between ministers," Glen Craig, managing partner of
the consulting firm Pacific Advisory, told NPR in a phone interview.

"We're the first country in the world that this has happened to. ...
It's not a good time in Vanuatu, I can assure you," continued Craig,
who also serves as chairman of the Vanuatu Business Resilience
Council.

After more than three weeks of working on the problem, Prime Minister
Alatoi Ishmael Kalsakau told local news outlets Wednesday that
services were 70 percent restored.

However, the disruption continues.

Vanuatu's government officials first discovered suspicious activity
on their networks, many of which are centrally connected, on Nov. 6.
They revealed the breach to local media several days later, but have
so far been fairly tight lipped about the extent of the damage, the
possible culprits, and what's being done to recover service.

Some sources have suggested the attack was ransomware, in which
cybercriminals break in and take data hostage in exchange for
payment, though the government has not officially confirmed whether
that's the case or addressed whether a ransom payment was made.

Vanuatu officials did not respond to NPR's requests for comment.

Although Vanuatu is not the first government to be targeted by a
disruptive cyberattack, the length of the outage and the level of
disruption may be unparalleled.

Additionally, the attack could be important geopolitically. Vanuatu
is officially neutral, and maintains relationships with Western
allies such as Australia as well as China. U.S. officials frequently
describe China and its growing global influence as a key national
security challenge.

The Australian government is on site helping local officials. Pat
Conroy, Australia's minister for international development and the
Pacific, told Vanuatu Daily in late November that Australia "sent in
a team to assist with that disgraceful cyberattack and the response."

Cybercrime has become a global issue, costing governments and private
companies billions of dollars through ransomware, extortion, email
scams, and lost business.

Cybersecurity experts who have spoken with NPR in recent months have
speculated that a strong response from the U.S. government to
criminal cyberattacks in recent years may have prompted
cybercriminals to shift their attention elsewhere. That includes
recovering millions in Bitcoin ransoms and depriving cybercriminals
of some of their profits, such as when the Department of Justice
seized $2.3 million, about half, of the ransom paid by Colonial
Pipeline to hackers in May 2021.

Other strategies include heavily publicizing intelligence on
cybercrime, helping victims recover their files rather than pay
ransoms, and extraditing cybercriminals from overseas to be tried in
U.S. courts.

The Pacific region has been battered with an increased number of
attacks recently, from a breach on Australian Telecom giant Optus,
which exposed millions of sensitive Australian health records, to a
ransomware attack on Papua New Guinea's government pay systems in
October 2021. Australia's Cyber Security Centre reported in November
that it received 76,000 cybercrime reports in the 2021-22 financial
year, which ended in June.

It wasn't until Wednesday, that Prime Minister Kalsakau spoke about
the breach in any detail. According to the Vanuatu Daily Post, he
said partial access had been restored to government financial
services, health procurement data, immigration and passport data,
and, perhaps most importantly, emergency lines for ambulances, the
fire department, and the police.

"In this recovery work, we are building back our government networks
better and safer," Kalsakau is quoted as saying. "We are bringing
systems online in a secure and contained environment with
strengthened safeguards to ensure there is no risk of re-infection."

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