The Cyprus Post has been hacked, leaking personal data and correspondence from the presidential palace, ministries, embassies, the police and the central prisons, it was made known on Monday.

A large-scale breach reportedly allowed hackers to obtain sensitive government documents, diplomatic correspondence and personal data through the postal services’ Thalis platform.

According to reports on Darknetserach by Kaduu and Daily Dark Web, the incident may raise issues of cyber-espionage.

They said this was one of the most serious breaches on the island.

The violated system has been shut down.

On October 3, according to a report on Reporter, a hacker called ByteToBreach announced on an online forum that he had obtained thousands of documents through Thalis.

These include parcels, invoices, police communication, embassy correspondence and presidential palace deliveries, with recipients found in England, Luxembourg, Poland and other EU countries.

The post on the forum referred to communication between the police, the justice and finance ministries and the central prisons, documents from the embassies of Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Israel, Spain, Romania and France, tracking numbers from parcels addressed to the police and the presidential palace, as well as invoices and financial documents from various ministries.

A second post said data violated included network data, IP addresses and user credentials, employee and client email addresses, parcels, correspondence and invoices for various entities, physical addresses and telephone numbers of businesses and individuals, surveillance data for correspondence to sensitive government departments, including the presidential palace, ministries, the police and the central prisons, embassy communication details, and internal financial transaction numbers and tracking codes.

The impact of the breach goes behold the theft of identity, as law enforcement, embassies and presidential security weak spots have been exposed, while the violation could lead to further breaches of government systems.

The incident could also lead to the public losing faith in the security of national postal services.

The Cyprus Post confirmed Thalis had been shut down for security reasons.

Experts on cybersecurity have reportedly said this was not a random attack and could possibly hold cyber-espionage motives.