The Swedish Public Health Agency (Folkhälsomyndigheten) has to shut down SmiNet, the country’s infectious diseases database after it was targeted in numerous hacking attempts.
SmiNet is also used to store electronic reports with statistics on COVID-19 infections. It was shut down on Thursday to investigate the attacks and was brought back online the next day.
The Swedish Public Health Agency found that there were several attempted intrusions into the SmiNet database which forced them to shut it down temporarily.
The agency stated that the investigation is ongoing in order to check whether anyone may have accessed sensitive personal data from the database, and also sort out and rectify any deficiencies. No additional updates will be issued during the investigation.
The Swedish Public Health Agency could not report complete COVID-19 stats starting with Wednesday at 4 PM due to the database shut down.
As of now there isn’t any evidence of unauthorized parties accessing sensitive information and the investigation will take at least a few more days until the reporting process will be restarted.
The incident has been reported to the Police and to the Privacy Protection Authority.
The agency stated that the next update of the statistics on cases of COVID-19 will be on Thursday, June 3.
