|
    - Photo for illustration purposes only - |
|||
 You
Might
Also Like    
     |
Published on Friday, April 22,
2022
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Regarding the massive cyberattacks and extortion that affected several public institutions since Monday, President Carlos Alvarado condemned the hacker's attack as "a criminal act against the State and the entire country."
According to Alvarado, the massive cyberattack is not a matter of paying a reward, but rather than that, they are interested in destabilizing the country just when it is going through a government transition process. "This is not an issue of money, but rather than that they seek to threaten the country in transition circumstances, but they will not succeed," Alvarado said.
The most recent hack was detected in the systems of the Ministry of Labor and the Fund for Social Development and Family Aid, which is an organization that holds information on social aid institutions and their programs.
According to Jorge Mora, director of Digital Governance, Thursday early morning the Computer Security Incident Response Center detected a cyber attack against these two institutions. The attack was quickly controlled, but the hackers did manage to extract information from the systems.
At press time, seven public institutions have suffered cyber attacks:
On Thursday, Congress made the decision to suspend its website www.asamblea.go.cr at night, as a security measure against any cyber attack.
The Ministry of Science confirmed that the cybercriminal group made public an offer in exchange for not revealing the hacked information, it is a 35% discount on the 10 million ransom.
Alvarado reaffirmed that "the
government will not pay anything to
these cybercriminals."
Specialists,
both from the public and private
sectors such as Microsoft and GBM,
as well as from other allied
countries such as experts from the
United States, Israel, Spain and
even the Organization of American
States continue to work on
re-establishing security systems and
platforms. The cyberattacks were allegedly made by Conti, a group of hackers. On Monday, in the no official content displayed on those government sites, they were asking the Ministry of Finance millions dollars in exchange for returning the stolen information.
They are related to ransomware that has been under surveillance since 2020, according to NHS Digital, which is the national provider of information, data and IT systems in the UK.
The ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or perpetually block access to it unless a ransom is paid
Many cybersecurity experts believe that Conti runs out of Russia. In February, members of Conti came out in support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to ZDNet, a site specializing in news coverage and analysis on technologies.
------------
  
         |
||
|