A computer attack on the Chilean Ministry of Defense allowed a group of hackers to access some emails from the Armed Forces, according to the Executive Branch of the South American country.
The group of hackers “Guacamaya”, which claims responsibility for this operation, leaked more than 350 GB of emails from the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Chile, one of the main advisory entities in national defense.
Hacking military servers called into question cybersecurity in Chile
As reported by the Chilean pressthe leak includes all kinds of communications, minutes, confidential reports and military intelligence documents, dated between February 2019 and May 2022.
The filtration It was published last September 19, in the midst of the Chilean national holidays, precisely on the day dedicated to commemorating the glories of the army. The repercussions have appeared gradually, as the content of this batch of messages has been publicized.
From the Executive Power headed by the first Chilean president Gabriel Boric, knowledge of this situation was notified, ordering an administrative summary to determine possible responsibilities in the leak of these documents.
When this situation was made public, the Chilean Minister of Defense, Maya Fernández, returned to Chile from the United Nations General Assembly to address this situation directly.
The more than 400,000 emails published, according to what was confirmed by the local press, contain military secrets such as the espionage of the Chilean army to the Communist Party of the country, the persecution of environmental activists and irregularities in viaticalare part of the most bullied contents of this leak.
Considering that in 2019 Chile experienced a social outburst, in which protests overflowed throughout the country and were contained with the start of a (still unfinished) process of drafting a new Constitution, the political landscape is extremely controversial. in the South American country. This leak further intensifies the internal tension, when intelligence information is revealed regarding the follow-up carried out on the leaders of the protests at the time and also on another old conflict still in progress, with the Mapuche people, an ethnic group from the south of the country.
Immediately, a visible repercussion was the resignation of the General in charge of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of Chile. However, everything indicates that this problem is still far from being resolved, since Entel, a telecommunications company in charge of the cybersecurity of this organization, is also pointed out as responsible; and Alberto Espina, Minister of Defense of Chile during the government of Sebastián Piñera, responsible for awarding this tender in 2018.
The current times are not to underestimate cybersecurity. In such delicate and confidential spaces, such as military instances, oversights like this can be quite expensive.