In Ukraine, the Ministry of Justice restored the registry of civil status after a cyber attack

From January 4, the State Registration of Civil Status Acts (DRACS) became operational in the system of state registers of Ukraine. In particular, the ability to register marriages, births and more has been restored, the Ministry of Justice said in a statement.

“Today, another register became operational – DRATSS, which suffered from a large-scale Russian cyber attack. Departments of state registration of acts of civil status have restored the possibility of entering information on birth, marriage, divorce, name change and death,” the message reads.

The department says that currently all the documents that were received in paper form during the shutdown of the registry are entered by specialists into the electronic system. The ministry added that citizens’ certificates remain valid, and their digital copies will soon appear in the registry.

The Ministry of Justice also informed that “starting tomorrow, data exchange with other state bodies will be resumed. We are talking about the State Tax Service of Ukraine, the Pension Fund and the Ministry of Defense.”

In addition, a number of online services in the “Diya” application will be launched on January 5 – it will again be possible to submit an application for postponement of mobilization for parents of three children under 18 years of age.

In addition, the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine reminded that the work of the three main notary registers had already been restored after the Russian cyber attack. Therefore, the following became available:

• Unified register of powers of attorney;
• Inheritance register;
• Unified register of special forms of notarial documents.

On December 19, the Minister of Justice Olga Stefanishyna reported on the most extensive external cyber attack on the state registers of Ukraine in recent times. As a result of the targeted attack, the work of state registers was temporarily stopped.

Stefanishyna said that the hacking of the Ministry of Justice registers did not affect other state information systems, although the Diya application “did not work in the part that is formed from data” from the Ministry of Justice registers. Also, according to her, there is no threat of loss of data or loss of functioning of registers.

At that time, Ministry of Justice predicted that the time for the priority restoration of the registers would be roughly up to 2 weeks.

The Security Service opened criminal proceedings after a cyber attack on state registers. The main version considered by the SBU is that Russian special services are behind this cyber attack, in particular, hacker groups connected to the GRU of the General Staff of Russia.