Ljubljana - The Slovenian Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the police were targeted in a hacking attack on Thursday, media have reported, with one outlet obtaining official confirmation from the police. While the MoD managed to block the attack, only a few police computers are reported to have been infected.

Citing unofficial information, the news site 24ur.com reported that around 90 users of the @policija.si e-mail domain opened an infected attachment, and hackers used a Trojan Horse virus to enter the police information system.

The police confirmed for the news site N1 that a sizeable number of police staff received messages in their email inboxes containing a malware attachment. "These were detected by our security systems and prevented infection, with the exception of a few individual office computers," the police stated.

Through rapid response they managed to contain the cyber incident. Oversight and investigation are under way. They assured N1 that no critical systems were affected, that no damage was caused and all services and work processes in the police force were running as normal.

Meanwhile, both 24ur.com and N1 reported that the Ministry of Defence intercepted the attack in time and successfully, so the security of their system was not breached.

In August, the information system of the Slovenian Civil Protection and Disaster Relief Administration was the target of a cyberattack, which crashed the Spin web application before it was later restored.

Due to the attack, operators had to manually enter incoming emergency calls into the system for some time. The attack also damaged the sound system that sends out a test siren on the first Saturday of every month. As a result, this signal was delayed by around 10 minutes in the Ljubljana area today, as it had to be triggered manually, the administration explained.