Skopje, 15 September 2021 (MIA) – State Statistical Office’s (SSO) website is constantly under fire from cyberattacks and there have been two attempts by hackers to break into the census system, which have been successfully warded off, says Apostol Simovski. “Our website is constantly under cyberattacks. Probably, they want to prevent the users from monitoring our information. We detected hackers trying to break the census process itself on two occasions, but they have been fortunately warded off. No damage has been done. I don’t know where the attacks have come from,” the Director of the State Statistical Office told TV 24. He said there are groups who want to see the process fail and have been calling on citizens not to take part in the statistical operation. “I don’t understand why these people are against the census.” Simovski claimed politicians haven’t exerted any pressure on the Statistical Office how to conduct the operation. “Both the government and the opposition have backed the process, which is a good thing. It’s our business to do our job professionally and no one has attempted to interfere,” said Simovski. More than 600,000 citizens have been counted so far since census operation started on Sept. 5. “I’m satisfied but it doesn’t make relaxed, I won’t relax until the final day of the census,” the Statistical Office’s head stressed. Speaking about the possible census outcome, Simovski said the operation might show that the country has a population of around 1.8 million people. “I wouldn’t want to speculate, but I expect there to be less people than what we’d counted in 2002. But, let’s wait and see the official data after we’ve processed all data,” he said.