At least 30 government sites have been blocked in Colombia since Tuesday as a result of a massive cyber attack that has also had consequences in several other Latin American countries, according to Colombian sources.
Tuesday's cyber attack targeted the Colombian state’s main telecommunications service provider, IFX Networks, a presidential statement said.
The government has urgently set up “a unified cybersecurity command post, PMU Ciber, to assess the damage and resolve the effects of the incident, which affected several entities,” the statement explained.
“We are examining which other public entities may have been affected, in order to know the real impact in Colombia," the Office of the President added in its statement, issued by its Digital Directorate. "It is important to clarify that the incident occurred at the IFX Networks service provider, and not public entities.”
“This external ransomware attack affects 762 companies in Latin America, with IFX supplying data to a total of 17 countries on the sub-continent, the text added.
According to the national press, the effects extend to Argentina, Panama and Chile and are said to be “gigantic.”
A total of 34 Colombian state entities are affected, including the Ministries of Health and Justice, with two million legal proceedings currently paralysed, again according to the press.
Quoting a digital security adviser to the Presidency, the daily El Tiempo asserts that “cybercriminals have hijacked information (…) from the Ministry of Health and the Judiciary,” demanding a ransom “in crypto-currencies.”
“This attack can be considered the biggest to infrastructure in Colombia in recent years,” Saul Kattan, a digital adviser to the government, commented on the X network. He called for the urgent creation of a national digital security agency.
In a statement, the Ministry of Health said it was “implementing alternative mechanisms to ensure the continuity of the functioning of the health sector nationwide, in order to minimise the impact on the operation of the affected applications.”
The websites of several of the country’s hospitals have already been blocked, according to a Colombian account on X specialising in hacking and cybersecurity.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Culture announced that its various sites “were no longer available.”
