The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, acknowledged this Friday that the Army suffered a hack that led to the leak of tens of thousands of documents that include information on his health status and drug trafficking operations.
“They took advantage of the fact that we are carrying out a change in the Army, the general told me, of the information system, that hackers are professionals, and they get in and out of all the information, but it is in the public domain, everything that is said there it is certain”, said in his daily press conference.
His statements come after the Latinus media reported the leak of tens of thousands of emails that were from 2016 to the present on the servers of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena).
The documents include details about the state of health of the president, who had a heart attack in 2013 and a catheterization last January.
In addition, according to the journalistic report, they exhibit the power of the Army within the Government and disputes between the heads of the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena), Luis Cresencio Sandoval, and the Navy (Semar), José Rafael Ojeda.
There are also details about the so-called “Culiacanazo”, a failed operation in October 2019 that sought to arrest Ovidio Guzmán, son of “Chapo” Guzmán in Sinaloa, in the northwest of the country.
“What is it that they make known? What is in the public domain, who hides nothing, fears nothing,” said López Obrador.
Although he did not identify the group that carried out the cyberattack, the Mexican leader stated that “they have done something similar” in Guatemala, Colombia, Chile and El Salvador.
He denounced that they are foreign groups that use the Mexican journalist from Latinus, Carlos Loret de Mola, to spread the information.
“I understand that this same group has already done the same thing in other countries, I think in Colombia, in Chile, that’s why I think it’s something that is handled from abroad, which is not from Mexico,” he said.
But López Obrador ruled out implementing more measures to protect the Armed Forces from future hacks.
“Nothing (of additional measures), because if you act with transparency, which is the golden rule of democracy, if you don’t lie, if you speak the truth, then what problem can you have,” he argued
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