National Emergency Declared in Costa Rica

Industry: Government | Level: Strategic | Source: BleepingComputer

As cyber-attacks from the Conti ransomware group have targeted multiple Costa Rica government agencies, a national emergency has been declared by the Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves on May 8th, 2022. The following was quoted by news outlet Amelia Rueda from the Costa Rican president "The attack that Costa Rica is suffering from cybercriminals, cyberterrorists is declared a national emergency and we are signing this decree, precisely, to declare a state of national emergency in the entire public sector of the Costa Rican State and allow our society to respond to these attacks as criminal acts." The impact was identified by BleepingComputer amounting to a 672 GB data dump associated with Costa Rican government agencies. Based on the ransomware group's data leak site, of the 672 GB of stolen data, 97% of the data has been leaked. From an initial review of the data posted, the data appears to be related to source code and SQL database information. A message from Conti on the leak site, mentions "UNC1756" as the actor responsible for the attack. The objective of the actor for the attacks is for financial gain and has warned of more attacks "I will definitely carry out attacks of a more serious form."