Above: Attorney General Reginald Armour. Photo by Damian Luk Pat, courtesy Office of the Attorney General.
Following a notice to lawyers and legal personnel about a disruption of its online services, the Office of the Attorney General and the Ministry of Legal Affairs have acknowledged that there was a cyberattack on its network.
There are no details on the nature or extent of the attack at this time.
A media release from the Ministry of Digital Transformation stated that:
“The Ministry of Digital Transformation advises that the Office of the Attorney General and Ministry of Legal Affairs (AGLA) detected a cyber-attack on its network. This unauthorised and illegal access has negatively impacted operations at the AGLA and certain associated Divisions.”
“Having taken actions to minimise the threat, an investigation, in partnership with leading industry cybersecurity experts, is ongoing. In the meantime, some services that are usually provided are temporarily unavailable. We apologise for the inconvenience.”
In a notice posted to the Legal Affairs Facebook page, affected legal teams are advised to use the following emails, solicitorgeneral@gov.tt, sgservice@gov.tt, chiefstatefiling@gov.tt, dpp@gov.tt.
Physical service can be done with the designated officers at the Office of the Solicitor General located at Tower C, Levels 17-18, 1A Wrightson Road, Port of Spain.
When developing a new website, or a new subsection of an existing website, it is important to ensure that you use HTTPS rather than HTTP as your hypertext transport protocol of choice. Many website developers who read this may be saying DUH!! but if you check the links and sublinks that emanate from the root page of the legal affairs website, do not be surprised to find http links. Hopefully, they will read this and fix it quick!