PRAGUE (Sputnik) — Zaoralek hypothesized that a foreign state could be behind the cyberattack.
"By its nature, the hacking attacks carried out on the Czech Republic's Ministry of Foreign Affairs are very similar to those carried out earlier on the US Democratic Party headquarters' online system," Zaoralek said at a briefing.
Zaoralek ruled out that the hackers could have managed to get into the ministry's internal computer system. According to the minister, they could get some information only from his email, which does not contain any classified data.
According to the Neovlini news portal, the hacker attack lasted for several months and this scandal has become the biggest in the area of security in recent years.
At the same time, Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Michael Lagronova did not confirm that some classified data was under threat, adding that the investigation was underway.
Cyberattacks on the Czech Foreign Ministry have been ongoing for a long period of time and are conducted in a sophisticated manner, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek said Tuesday, adding that foreign countries may be behind those attacks.
"There are constant hacker attacks on the Czech Foreign Ministry. In early January, we received information that one of such attacks was partially successful… According to experts, the attack on our ministry was done in a very sophisticated way, and a foreign state could have been behind it," Zaoralek said.
Russian government officials have repeatedly denied accusations of interfering in US elections, including charges of hacking DNC systems.
Democratic Party rival Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million in the presidential election on November 8, 2016. Trump, however, claims he would have won the popular vote if not for three to five million ballots that were cast illegally, although he has failed to release evidence to substantiate the claims.
