According to a press release made by Alicia Banuelos, the Science and Technology Minister of Argentina it’s confirmed that the vital files about the government were encrypted by a ransomware attack which took place on November 25th,2019.
Ms. Alicia said that the data was stored on a server farm which usually houses local government files.
However, a close associate to the Minister says that most of the files encrypted were archival and confirmed that the government managed to decrypt over 90% of data which accounts for more than 7,770 GB- secured and stored from the past 10 years.
How the malware infiltrated the data center network and how much data was encrypted is yet to be probed.
Cybersecurity Insiders has learned that the data decryption process might go on for the next 15 days- means December 1st – December 15th and the time taken is due to the sheer size of the archives.
Highly placed sources say that the hackers were expecting and demanding between 35 to 50 BTC in exchange for the decryption key. However, the authorities refused to negotiate with the hackers and instead opted to restore the data from backups.
Note 1- Last week a US data center named CyrusOne was targeted by hackers with Sodinokibi Ransomware.
Note 2- News is out that a data center holding digital information related to Argentina’s government was hit by ransomware on November 25th,2019 and the details were released to the media after Minister Alicia gave an official interview to Agencia De Noticia De San Luis- a government-related news outlet.
