Bulgarian police have detained a suspect in a hacking attack on the Balkan country’s National Revenue Agency that led to the leak of personal and financial data of millions of people, an interior ministry spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
“We have a suspect that has been detained,” the spokeswoman said.
She declined to elaborate, reports Reuters.
Earlier on Tuesday, the country’s finance minister apologised to the country after admitting hackers had stolen millions of taxpayers’ financial data.
The breach of servers at the tax agency (NRA) happened at the end of June and an official there said it was probably carried out from abroad.
A person claiming to be a Russian hacker emailed local media on Monday offering access to the stolen data.
The reason for the attack was not immediately clear.
But the email’s author, who described the government as corrupt, said hackers had compromised more than 110 databases, including “critically confidential” information from key administrations, some of which was being offered to journalists.
Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said about 3.0 per cent of the agency’s database was affected, involving millions of records in the nation of seven million, though the leaked information was not classified and did not endanger financial stability.