What We Must Learn from the Recent Cyberattacks on the State

La Tercera, October 4, 2022

Warnings are recurrent and nothing new, but in recent weeks, two serious episodes have underscored the urgency of a discussion that seems increasingly unavoidable: the vulnerability of the public apparatus regarding cybersecurity. First, on September 19, it was revealed that a group of hackers had accessed a folder of 350 gigabytes containing over 400,000 emails from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, EMCO—an entity that encompasses the three branches of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defense—and was disclosing them online. The attack occurred in May, but the government was informed in September. This case led to the resignation of the head of EMCO, Army General Guillermo Paiva, and the initiation of an internal investigation within the organization. A second cyberattack was reported last week. On Monday, the Judiciary announced that approximately 150 corporate computers had been infected. These are machines operating on Windows 7, and the attack resulted in several judges losing access to their cases. Along with announcing a criminal complaint against those responsible, the spokesperson for the Supreme Court, Ángela Vivanco, stated that they were seeking the allocation of additional fiscal resources for the upgrading of equipment and computer systems. These are the cases we have learned about in recent days, but given the nature of the issue, one must ask how many attacks have gone unreported and, above all, how prepared the Chilean state is to face the enormous challenge of cybersecurity and the threat of hacker attacks. Today, at El Café Diario, we discuss this with cybersecurity expert Carlos Solar, a senior researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in the United Kingdom, associated with the AthenaLab center in Chile. In December, Solar will publish a book on cybersecurity in Latin America.

Source: La Tercera