The Government is yet to recover all the data lost from a large scale ransomware attack on state email domains during 17 May to 26 August this year, The Daily Morning learnt.

The large-scale attack is one of the biggest breaches of cyber security in Sri Lanka during recent times, and comes in the wake of the Government calling for greater digitisation and automation of state services.   

It was reported that all Government offices using the “gov.lk” email domain, including the Cabinet Office, have lost data from 17 May to 26 August 2023, after a massive ransomware attack and it has been confirmed by the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA).

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (10), State Minister of Technology Kanaka Herath said that the situation is now controlled but the Ministry is working to recover the lost data as soon as possible. Minister Herath claimed that the attack does not have an impact on national security, but acknowledged that thousands of government email addresses have been affected due to this attack.

He said that the problem lies with the network of the LGN, the Government-owned private network that was introduced to connect government organisations.

“We identified that we have lost data for a period of two months. Now we are trying to recover those lost data. However the current situation is under control and no issue in email addresses. We cannot recover the lost data due to an issue in the LGN network, but we will be able to recover it soon. We are not capable of giving information of the lost email addresses institution-wise but we can assure that it has no impact on national security,” he said.

According to media reports the virus could have affected around 5,000 email addresses and there was no offline backup for around two-and-a-half months worth of data. Since the online backup system had also been corrupted, users lost emails for that period. The Cabinet Office is among the entities in the Lanka Government Network (LGN). It uses the mail@gov.lk email domain.

When contacted by The Daily Morning, sources within the Ministry of Defence said that they cannot comment on this matter since technology related matters are not under their purview.