In the second quarter of 2025, Latvia recorded a significant increase in cyber incidents, with 709 cases – 12 percent more than in the first quarter of 2025 and 28 percent more than in the same period of 2024, the national cyber incident response institution Cert.lv informed LETA.
Much of this growth is linked to the human factor, rising dependence on digital technologies, device vulnerabilities, and the increasing malicious use of generative artificial intelligence models.
The sharp rise in fraud reflects the sustained intensity of large-scale campaigns targeting the public by impersonating government institutions and well-known companies. New attack vectors include smart TVs, voice spoofing, and double extortion. There has also been an increase in business email compromise (BEC) and ransomware encryption activity. In addition, global-scale login data leaks (from Google, Facebook, Apple, and others) have raised the likelihood of cyberattacks in Latvia.
DDoS attacks remained intense, with seasonal peaks, especially around holidays and politically significant events. However, most of these attacks were automatically mitigated. At the same time, no cyber incidents or threats were detected that could indicate attempts to influence this year’s elections in Latvia, either during, before, or after the vote. According to Cert.lv, this demonstrates the effectiveness of the preventive cybersecurity measures in place.
The intensity and complexity of cyberattacks posing a high risk to the public, businesses, and institutions are rising in Latvian cyberspace, Cert.lv emphasized. Cyberattacks increasingly affect people’s financial assets directly and indirectly, and their impact is becoming more tangible. Such negative trends can undermine public trust in digital services.
Cert.lv operates under the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Latvia. Its mandate is to maintain an overview of electronic information space activities, and to support or coordinate the prevention of IT security incidents in Latvia’s IP address ranges and the .lv domain zone.
Source: BNS
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