It all started as a threat through the social networks Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. A video by the international group "Anonymous" that warned that on August 30 they would block the Internet pages of several Guatemalan agencies.
The threat materialized a day earlier. A group of Argentine hackers carried out a simultaneous attack, as never seen before, on the pages of Congress, the Public Ministry (MP), the Comptroller General of Accounts, the Ministry of the Interior (Mingob), the library of the University of San Carlos and the Presidency (www.guatemala.gob.gt) that left them disabled for several hours.
According to research by computer security consultancy Devel Security, the attacks did not come from "Anonymous", but from the Argentines "xDarkSton3x" and "MetalSoft Team".
To clarify the authorship of the cyberattacks, Devel Security experts contacted members of the Anonymous network that issued a global statement denying the facts and that they do not attack the media.
The attack blocked the pages of a free-to-air television channel, three television newscasts, a radio station and two schools. The groups "MetalSoft Team" and "xDarkSton3x" credited on their Twitter account the authorship of the attacks, and Devel Security technicians entered MetalSoft's real-time Internet chat (IRC) to investigate how they managed to "hack" the portals.The hackers' response was that the IP (Internet Protocol) addresses of the government's websites and the attacked media are the same, and that the service provider left a vulnerability that exposed them to cyberattacks and information theft.
The threat of the attack continued yesterday, so several entities blocked their pages to prevent the threat. The MetalSoft Team website announced that yesterday afternoon they had attacked the portal of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE); however, Carlos Meléndez, head of it at that institution, said that they had not detected any infiltration and that the page was working normally.
According to Devel Security, the news of the Anonymous threat gained great relevance and reached the ears of hacker groups internationally, which aroused an interest in investigating the vulnerability of Guatemalan sites.
With the identification of these vulnerabilities and the threat that "Anonymous" was going to attack on the 30th, these groups generated the attack in a premeditated way, a day before, taking away the recognition and fame that it entails.
Devel Security noted that the attacks were not performed by denial of service, they were more damaging as the hackers altered and extracted data within the database and Web pages of the vulnerable servers. "How far they were able to go on the servers will be to carefully review the records."
Deputy Francisco Contreras, rapporteur of the Computer Crimes bill, says that one problem is that these crimes are not typified and the law has been vetoed in Congress for two years. He added that hackers can steal public databases.
Author: Alexis Batres
Source: el Periódico - Guatemala
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