Hungary's defence procurement agency hacked, government says

Foreign hackers broke into the IT systems of a Hungarian government agency responsible for defence procurement but no sensitive data about Hungary's military have been compromised, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff said on Thursday.

Gergely Gulyas told a briefing that a "hostile foreign, non-state hacker group attacked the Defence Procurement Agency, and we can say that no sensitive data about military structure is handled there, so hackers cannot be in possession of those."

He did not name the group.

The most sensitive data that hackers could have accessed were "plans and data about military procurement," Gulyas said in response to a question from a reporter.

"Nothing that could harm Hungary's national security was made public," he said.

Hungary is a NATO member state that shares a border with Ukraine where Russia's February 2022 invasion started the deadliest war on European soil in more than 70 years.

News outlet Magyar Hang reported that a group called INC Ransomware broke into the Defence Procurement Agency's servers, downloaded and encrypted all files and published some screenshots from them online.

Gulyas said an investigation was ongoing.

"The assessment of the exact scale of the breach and what the (hackers) accessed is still ongoing," he said.

Hungary announced a modernization and rearmament programme of its military in 2017. Since then, it has bought tanks, helicopters, air defence systems and started to build a military industry by inviting foreign companies to invest and set up manufacturing plants on its territory.

Germany's Rheinmetall, for example, is producing its new Lynx infantry fighting vehicles in Zalaegerszeg in western Hungary.

The start of the war in Ukraine brought about another rise in military spending. Hungary's government has said it expects military spending of at least 2% of its GDP in 2024.