Employees of the Chamber of Deputies, from whose IT network hackers recently managed to steal hundreds of documents, including copies of ID cards of deputies and Prime Minister Marcel Čolaka, still use computers with the Windows XP operating system, which is no longer technically supported. for 10 years. The information appeared in an open auction that started on Friday by the Chamber of Deputies, which wants to buy 50 PCs with the latest version of the operating system.

Last week, the Chamber of Deputies launched an open tender for the purchase of All-in-One desktop PCs with the Windows 11 Pro operating system.

The procurement procedure, announced on Friday, February 16, in the Electronic State Procurement System, is divided into 3 lots:

• 90 PCs for the organization of the 31st annual session of the OSCE / Estimated cost: over 491,000 lei
• 350 PCs for the activities of deputies in parliamentary offices / Estimated cost: approximately 2 million lei
• 50 PCs for the work of the services of the Chamber of Deputies / Estimated cost: over 273,000 lei

The Chamber of Deputies still uses computers with Windows XP and Windows 7

The specification for the purchase of 50 PCs, necessary for the operation of the Chamber of Deputies, states the following:

• “Currently in the Chamber of Deputies, desktop PCs purchased between 2002 and 2008 running Windows XP, which is no longer supported since April 2014, and Windows 7, which is no longer supported since January, are still working in 2020” .

It should be noted that the budget of the Chamber of Deputies for 2023 for spending on goods and services amounted to more than 84 million lei (approximately 17 million euros).

The situation with PCs with outdated operating systems is much worse than presented by the Minister of Digitalization

The situation with outdated computer equipment in the Chamber of Deputies is much worse than it was presented to the government last month by Minister of Digitization Bohdan Ivan.

At that time, he reported that during a cyberattack on the IT system of the Chamber of Deputies, 316 files with a volume of 300 megabytes were copied, the content of which is mostly public, as well as copies of documents certifying the identity of parliamentarians.

The minister also noted that the IT systems were not updated with the latest technologies and software versions available in the market.

• “Some devices were still running a version of Windows 7 that was long out of date. It is an administrative attribute of those in the IT department of the Chamber of Deputies for these cyber security measures,” the digitization minister said at the time, stressing that a possible cause of this attack could be human error.

On Friday, Minister Bohdan Ivan explained what human error caused the data breach in the IT network of the Chamber of Deputies, during which hackers also stole a copy of Prime Minister Cholaka’s identity card.

• “It was a human error: an employee working remotely during the pandemic at some point used a personal laptop that was connected to the IT network of the Chamber of Deputies,” the minister said.

According to him, an employee of the Chamber of Deputies holds a managerial position, and the General Secretariat of the Chamber of Deputies has started an internal investigation to bring the guilty parties to justice.

• Read: Human error that allowed to steal data from the Chamber of Deputies: an employee remotely connected with his personal laptop to the IT network – says the Minister of Digitalization

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