“Today I demanded the resignations of the executive director of Bulgarian Posts and the entire composition of the board of directors,” said the principal of the post, Deputy Prime Minister Kalina Konstantinova.

“The Bulgarian Post was set on fire only when we said that we had a plan for their recovery. Prior to our intervention, no one had ever considered including Bulgarian Post in the Recovery and Sustainability Plan”, said the Deputy Prime Minister.

According to Konstantinova, the post offices are invaluable state capital and in many places, they are the only face of the state for the people. She gave examples with a number of European countries and said that instead of a cause for pride, our post offices are a cause for shame.

“The post offices receive BGN 80 million in state funding annually. We found a company that was systematically and consistently led to bankruptcy. GERB's Ministry of Finance has systematically underfunded Bulgarian Posts, despite its commitment. Where the tens of millions that were destined for the post office went is a mystery,” said Kalina Konstantinova.

She announced that Bulgarian Posts has a share of less than 2% in courier services. According to her, no owner would finance loss-making services.

SANS Chairman Plamen Tonchev, who is taking part in a press conference on the subject at the Council of Ministers, said the agency had been notified of the cyber attack on the post offices on 16 April.

“The post offices themselves refused our help at the beginning on the grounds that they would deal with the problem on their own,” Tonchev stressed and noted that the post offices were not designated by the Council of Ministers as a strategic site.

For his part, the IT expert and adviser in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister Vasil Velichkov provided more details. He announced that the virus with which Bulgarian Posts was attacked bears the handwriting of the Russian Federation.

Velichkov informed that the attack started with penetration into the network of Bulgarian Posts on April 4, all servers were carefully scanned and additional tools for malicious code were installed. A test was performed on April 5 and then there was a lull until April 16. According to the IT expert, this was done in order to wait for a day off and at the same time for the moment of payment of pensions.

He informed that part of the archive of Bulgarian Posts will probably be lost.

Due to the delay in the reaction and the fact that employees of the post office worked from the so-called “home office”, the cryptovirus has caused serious damage, explained the expert.

Much of the data is probably lost forever. Currently, 26 services cannot be used. One of them is tracking shipments within the country and paying bills, Velichkov said.

Six thousand computers in 2,800 settlements need to be reinstalled in order to restore the bill payment service, he added.

In addition, an IT expert expressed suspicion of information leakage from within.

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