The Chile Judiciary issued a cyber security alert for ransomware on its network and asked officials not to open or read emails or messages “of dubious origin.” This incident affected the systems with serious problems, because of which some hearings scheduled for this morning were suspended.
This after finding some corporate computers with Windows 7 and McAfee antivirus with a cryptolocker . According to the Judiciary, 3,500 computers were susceptible to infection, out of a total of 14,990 in the service, but after a review, they confirmed that 150 computers were affected , equivalent to 1%.
“So far we have less than 1% of infected computers. The mitigation steps have already been taken to prevent further spread. These computers cannot access the network and we are changing the antivirus,” said the deputy director of the Administrative Corporation of the Judiciary, Zvonimir Koporcic. Earlier ransomware groups leaked 3,500 emails of Chilean army.
Despite the reported problems, sources maintain that this incident does not affect the emails or internal processing systems of the Judiciary. The four chambers of the Chile’s Supreme Court operate normally.
Thus, from the Judiciary they asked its members “to be skeptical about offers , promotions or incredible prizes that are offered on the Internet, or where they identify the user as a consumer of pornographic material on the Internet, extorting payments to avoid its dissemination”.
The spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, Ángela Vivanco, referred to the hacking inside different computers of the Judiciary and affirmed that fortunately this situation could be handled quite well.
In addition, she indicated that some of the computers were infected, but not the entire PJUD network. She also assured that there was no Chamber of the supreme court that was affected by this attack.
The spokesperson minister specified that one should always “report what corresponds, when it can be investigated and it is a technical issue that does not belong to the Judiciary as Cybercrime units should investigate this crime first.”
Meanwhile, Vivanco also mentioned that as a Judicial Branch they have a very tight budget, so they do not have a large amount of resources to use updated operating systems and antivirus.
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15 years of experience in risk and control process, security audit support, business continuity design and support, workgroup management and information security standards.
