Lithuania’s state security chief says no evidence yet links data breach to Russia

Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) cannot currently attribute a major data leak from the country’s Centre of Registers to Russian involvement, its director Remigijus Bridikis said in an interview with Žinių radijas on Tuesday, as reported by the BNS news agency.

Investigators are probing how hundreds of thousands of property and legal records were accessed without authorisation, but Bridikis cautioned that pinpointing responsibility requires “deep technical work.”

“At this stage, I cannot say that Russia is responsible for this breach,” Bridikis stated, though he noted that Russia, China, and North Korea remain the primary state actors in cyber operations aimed at gathering and potentially weaponising data.

The Prosecutor General’s Office confirmed last week it was investigating the unauthorised extraction of over 600,000 records from the Centre of Registers. Officials suspect external actors exploited authorised access credentials to harvest real estate registry data. Some unauthorised login attempts originated from abroad, though prosecutors have not disclosed specific countries or institutions involved.

Bridikis stressed that the incident appears to be “data theft” rather than a hybrid attack or sabotage, as no disruption to systems or infrastructure occurred. “This is theft of state property—just on a large scale, with significant potential impact,” he said.

The Centre of Registers’ former director, Adrijus Jusas, resigned on Monday but did not provide further details on the breach. Conservative leader Laurynas Kasčiūnas had previously suggested possible ties to Russian intelligence, though no evidence has been presented.