Authorities in Montreux hacked: Another cyber-attack strikes Switzerland

The Swiss town of Montreux has confirmed that it was recently a victim of a cyber-attack that breached databases belonging to the local council. It is one of several attacks on various Swiss cantons and businesses in the last year.

It remains unclear whether data was stolen

On October 10, the spokesperson for the Riviera Security Association (ASR), Dounya Schürmann-Kabouya, said in an interview with Swiss News Agency Keystone-SDA, “The attack may be one to two weeks old at the most.” The municipality has not been able to ascertain whether the attack resulted in the theft of data. 

The emergency services have set up a special “crisis cell” to help the municipality deal with the breach and specialists from across Switzerland have been brought in to assist in order to understand what data has been affected and crucially, who was behind the attack. 

Switzerland has been the victim of multiple attacks this year

Montreux is not the first municipality to suffer a cyber-attack this year. A similar attack targeted the town of Rolle in May 2021, where the attackers were able to obtain information including email accounts, passwords and login details. 

The hackers then sold thousands of the login details and files associated with the hack on the internet and threatened to hack other Swiss institutions such as hospitals and international companies based in Switzerland.  

More than 2.700 Swiss businesses have been targeted by ransomware in the past year, according to a recent report by Beobachter. Some of the firms hit include the large Swiss companies Comparis and Stadler Rail.